As many business ideas, it all started from a personal experience to find a job and a rhetorical question “why is this so complicated”?
5 years ago, being involved in the Young professional network in London, our co-Founders saw how candidates struggled to find a job, while companies found it extremely challenging to find good candidates even with the help of recruiters.
Thorough market research and hundreds of interviews with all parties involved in the recruitment process identified key problems of the market. As a result, the idea of how to address those problems arose and later it transformed into a business project, which since 2017 is known as PitchMe.
What problems we address:
The core aim of recruitment is to unlock humankind’s full potential. Although we generally recognise its massive importance, four major problems are present in today’s recruitment market landscape:
- CV’s are not an accurate tool of professional presentation.
- Costs of recruitment mistakes are higher for SMEs.
- The recruitment process does not meet the needs or speed of modern businesses.
- Online education does not solve the disconnect between learning new skills and rapidly changing employment market.
Skillsourcing solution:
We believe that every candidate has a talent and diversity of skills that employers are looking for. The question is, how to identify each candidate’s capabilities and match employer and candidate’s motivations.
For that purpose, we introduce a Skillsourcing process – a novel approach for the management of human resources, relying on multilayer profiling of skills and matchmaking between those who offer skills and those who need them.
We designed a new tool of professional self-presentation – SmartMe® profile. SmartMe® Profile offers a new framework for candidate’s digital professional identity. It allows PitchMe not only to create a comprehensive picture of the knowledge and professional capabilities for candidates, but also to advise on how to improve their employability in order to address the emergent needs of the market.
Who PitchMe solution is for:
We focus on organisational structures that are more dynamic and flexible today and those who are moving away from being role-based. We target businesses that are not recruiting people around ‘roles’. We work with SMEs that want people with different backgrounds and the right ‘attitude sets’.
We help students, graduates and young professionals to adjust to a rapidly changing business environment. We empower candidates to demonstrate their real abilities and knowledge, allowing anyone with the relevant skillset to apply for a position, regardless of their professional background.
Our Values:
Diversity. We claim that a job search should be equal for everyone. We wholeheartedly believe that what should matter are skills and real knowledge, not education or professional background. Therefore, we apply an anonymous process for candidates ensuring that subjectivity and bias are removed from the employer’s decision-making.
Adaptability. We help candidates navigate their job search and professional development, by suggesting what skills to improve.
Social impact. In line with professionals, we target the most active audience: students, recent graduates and career shifters who have suffered from disadvantaged positions on the job market. Our solution gives them an opportunity to showcase their skills, making them competitive.
No boundaries. We expand search horizons for candidates and employers, introducing them with options they even have not considered before.
Our Past:
Since 2018 we have been on quite the adventure::
- conducted product validation surveys in the UK, US and Europe
- completed beta-testing
- onboarded first alpha-users
- started generating revenue
We have dedicated our first year to understanding our customers, their motivations and behavior patterns. We have conducted a number of focus-groups for different users. We have tested our MVP version of technology in the meanwhile developing the V1 of the platform.
Our present:
It is the beginning of the 2019 and we are extremely happy to have overcome many challenges as an early-stage startup. With newly obtained funding we are going to:
1) Introduce a new version of the platform supported by new technology.
We have a tech-platform that can process thousands of positions around the world each and every day. This year we have softly launched our integration with online education platforms. It’s still in its early stages but this offering already constitutes a significant part of our business.
2) Mange a well-functioning team performing at their best.
We are proud to say that our team consists of people with unique skillsets and experiences and we have everyone we need to achieve our business goals. We now need to learn how to get our A-Players performing at their best. Otherwise, we risk creating a dysfunctional group of superstars who don’t work together at all.
We have developed our own effective cadence of regular team meetings and communication to help us build a scalable and cohesive operation.
3) Showcase predictable and profitable growth.
Business growth doesn’t have a silver bullet. It’s a mix of dozens of various traction channels. In 2019 we planned numerous experiments to determine our marketing-mix. We plan to carry an offline and online campaign to test and verify our hypothesis.
4) Report above average unit economics.
Our main target for this year is to perform at thoroughly justified metrics, such as CAC (customer acquisition costs) and CLF (customer lifetime value). We plan to make our numbers talk louder than words and prove that our business model is scalable and has the potential to be amongst the largest and most successful.
5) Continue with being financially prudent.
Even if we weren’t in a perpetual bootstrapping mode, our instinctive financial prudence would prevent us from spending on trendy offices and expensive parties.
We focus our financial resources on building the leanest and most forward-looking company possible. We invest significantly in R&D. With the new round of financing, we will spend 40% of our budget on cutting-edge technology. We will also devote significant funds to marketing experiments and plan to develop and support our talented team.
6) Protecting our castle.
High customer retention, strategic partnerships, loyal supply-side, network effects – all these competitive advantages help us protect our castle and the moat surrounding it all, is our technology.
Our business model goes by many names – some call it a platform, others a managed marketplace. Regardless of the definition, at the heart of our business model lies the technology.
Having an international team, allows us to attract exceptional tech based talent outside of the UK, which means we can build 10x faster and 10x cheaper. In a business heavily reliant on technology for operational excellence and scalable client acquisition, that is the best defense we could have wished for. We are protecting our IP not only by signing paperwork, but also by giving different levels of access to the technology for various team members.
Our future:
Being very focused on our current goals, we are constantly monitoring the market and keep our hand on the pulse. For example, we are looking at the trends of blockchanisation and its penetration into the education sector. We are going to develop blockchain infrastructure in order to meet those trends. More and more universities are introducing e-wallets for students to keep the record of their performance.
We have also seen similar trends in the recruitment sector, where recruiters are digitalizing candidate’s profiles. In order to be prepared for the future of digital profiles ‘trading’, PitchMe will develop a blockchain infrastructure and will be able to open up to the new pool of data and opportunities.
THANK YOU AND A HAPPY NEW CHAPTER TO US!
We would like to thank everyone who has supported PitchMe up to now.
Our simpler, faster and fairer recruitment has helped hundreds of businesses in 4 countries staff the right talent, thus saving them money and adding value.
We will help thousands more! It’s not going to be fast and it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be one hell of a journey!
Keep up with our future updates.
PitchMe Team
P.S. If you are new here, let us tell you a bit about PitchMe. PitchMe is an AI based platform that helps you to get matched with your best fit job, for free. We capture your skills, measure them and pitch you to employers. Employers compete for your talent. To try PitchMe now and get matched with your next job, register here. Completing your profile takes less than 5 minutes.