Online hiring startup Workable recently secured about $780,000 (600,000 Euros) in a seed-funding round led by Openfund. The funding means potential improvements for the cloud-based hiring tool.
Workable gives businesses a way to manage the hiring process all in one place, rather than having to go back and forth between emails, LinkedIn, online job boards, PDF resumes and other HR tools.
But perhaps more importantly, the tool collects information from an applicant’s full online presence. So rather than putting all the emphasis on resumes, Workable combs through social media profiles and other sites to find information about an applicant’s past employment, education and expertise. If you are the hiring manager, it presumably saves you time. You won’t have to search for such information all over the Web and collect it manually.
The site requires users to sign in with a LinkedIn account. It also allows applicants to apply for open positions with their LinkedIn account in place of an actual resume.
The photo above shows a Workable dashboard for an open position. You can see how many candidates have applied for the position. You also can see how many have been rejected or shortlisted at this point in the process. There are places for reviewing candidates, discussing among your team members, and viewing candidates’ LinkedIn profiles and other details.
Companies can use the tool to set up custom screening requirements for their open positions. For instance, a company could require applicants to have at least three years’ experience in marketing to even be considered for an open position. If applicants don’t select that as one of their qualifications when applying, you can see that right away. Then you can immediately move onto the next applicant. You needn’t waste time reading through an entire resume to determine that for yourself.
Once candidates are shortlisted, you can assign interviews to your team member. Or you can let others know when you have set up interviews or phone calls with certain applicants.
The premise behind the tool is one that may be a time-saver for small businesses. However, it’s not a completely new idea. Other Web-based hiring systems like SmartRecruiters and JobVite offer similar ways for businesses to post jobs and sort through candidates.
Workable, a Greece-based startup, first launched its beta version in October of 2012. The company has already added features like custom application forms and automatic job postings to sites like Indeed.com.
