This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project aims to create core algorithms for a Talent Acquisition System to pragmatically match candidates to startup job opportunities. Startup hiring needs are unique, and the market lacks an effective platform to accelerate and improve this core competency for company building. Generic search of a resume database does not sufficiently capture the unique fit requirements of startup employment nor return acceptable results. This research aims to incorporate (a) limited employer input of search criteria using a simple interface with (b) a broad range of normalized inputs, each individually scored for startup fit, to create a self-tuning algorithm for the search, discovery, and pairing of candidates to the unique needs of startups. The innovation in this approach is to create a system inherently weighted to both the hard and soft attributes of startup work/life. If successful, this effort will remove much of the guesswork by pointing employers to those most likely to excel in these opportunities. Data extraction, scoring techniques, and full text search will be applied to resumes, questionnaires, job search histories, social networking maps and search terms to feed the algorithm.
The broader impact of this project will be to improve the success rate for young companies by accelerating and improving the staffing of strong teams at every level in the organization. StartUpHire believes there is significant commercial potential for a startup centric career resource in the $6 billion annual U.S. online recruitment industry. Competitive approaches treat startup recruiting as identical to large company recruiting, yet experience indicates there is tremendous demand for an approach built around the unique needs of this community. Companies benefit by (a) focusing on talent which self-selects into this ecosystem and (b) algorithmically filtering these candidates using startup-specific success criteria. This research will create the first platform of its kind specific to startups, something employers have repeatedly requested. The proposed system will deliver both quality and speed biased to the needs of emerging growth companies.
StartUpHire's mission is to connect talented individuals to exciting career opportunities at startup companies and to accelerate the team building process for companies and their investors. These are some of the most rewarding careers on the planet, but they historically have been difficult to identify. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project created core algorithms for a Talent Acquisition System and supporting tools/technology to pragmatically match candidate resumes or profiles to startup job opportunities. Startup hiring needs are unique, and the market lacked an effective platform to accelerate and improve this core competency for company building. Generic search of a resume database does not sufficiently capture the unique fit requirements of startup employment nor return acceptable results. This project incorporated (a) limited employer input of search criteria using a Google-like interface with (b) a broad range of normalized inputs, each individually scored for startup fit, to in an effort to create a self-tuning algorithm for the search, discovery, and pairing of candidates to the unique needs of startups. The innovation in this approach was to create a system inherently weighted to both the hard and soft attributes of startup work/life. Startup employment is not for everyone. This effort was focused on removing much of the guesswork by pointing employers to those most likely to excel in these opportunities. Data extraction, scoring techniques, and full text search were applied to resumes, questionnaires, job search histories, social networking maps and search terms to feed the algorithm. Through the work done on this project StartUpHire has gained traction and delivered value to the ecosystem. Currently the main website gets 115,000 unique visitors monthly. There have been 198,000 job openings listed on the site since inception from 4800 companies. There are 90,000 candidate profiles in the Talent Vault with more being added every day. 13,000 email alert subscriptions exist. Sixty venture capital firms use the StartUpHire widget to display open positions at their portfolio companies.
