Finding a tech job should be more like online dating, says Hired

Hired likes to compare itself with an online dating service, but for tech jobs.

Founded in 2012, the job-matching marketplace officially launched in Australia Thursday. It's not quite Tinder though. It's more similar to Raya, the notoriously choosy dating app. Hired sells itself as offering pre-assessed quality and reliability, both to job candidates and companies.

IMAGE: MINT IMAGES/AP IMAGES

Candidates don't pay to be listed on the platform, but companies, or "clients," pay in one of two ways: If they make a hire, they can pay a success fee of 15 percent of first year salary. Alternatively, clients can pay a subscription fee, including a flat monthly fee for unlimited hires.

Hired CEO Mehul Patel told Mashable that while close to 40,000 job seekers apply to be listed on the platform globally each month, it takes only around 5 to 8 percent. 

"We look at their skill sets, we look at where they worked, we might look at their GitHub code, we look at their geography, education — a lot of that's algorithmic," Patel said. "The algorithm knows what profiles have been successful in the past." 

Likewise, Patel said Hired only takes about 10 percent of companies that apply. Hired later clarified that it accepts around 25 percent of Australian companies that apply. 

More than 6,000 companies have used the platform globally, Patel claimed, with around 500,000 applicants on the platform since founding.

Based in San Francisco, the company is still private and most recently raised $40 million (A$52 million) in a Series C funding round in early 2016. While it's not yet profitable, Patel said he expected to reach that goal in the next 12 months.

Getting started in Australia

Hired launched a beta test in Australia in February, with a team of seven across Sydney and Melbourne. 

Clients tend "to be earlier stage technology companies because they have raised some money and now they need engineers," Sascha Gray, Hired's local general manager, told Mashable.

Around 500 Australian clients (mostly startups) have signed up, she claimed, with 20,000 job seeking applicants.

Gray said they examine companies for stability before allowing them on Hired, particularly locally. "We work with a lot of startups that have just got funding," she explained. "To make sure that it's a stable environment, we ask questions in the discovery phases with the client around their growth plans, how stable they are, and what the future looks like."

Graphic design startup Canva was one of the Australian companies who used Hired during its test phase.

Mahesh Muralidhar, people operations lead at Canva, said the startup has made three hires through the platform so far, two of which were international. 

That squares with Hired's finding that 32 percent of interview requests from Australian companies were for international candidates.

To find staff, Canva typically uses distribution channels like LinkedIn, Stack Overflow and its own career page, but personal referrals are often best. "Referrals are really appreciated, but Hired puts us in touch with top talent that is outside our network," he added.

For Muralidhar, Hired is now among the top two or three of platforms used to find job candidates — a difficult task, given Canva's high talent bar. "I think given how new they are to the space, and the fact they're new to Australia, it's really impressive," he said. "The fact they've made three placements is really fantastic."

There are plenty of online job marketplaces in Australia, from Seek to Indeed.com, but tech hirers may end up persuaded by Hired's air of exclusivity and Silicon Valley stardust.

Overcoming hiring bias

In addition to finding talent, Hired thinks it can help companies find talent in better ways.

Patel said the team added an opt-in bias filter to the platform in recent months. "If you have someone's photo and you have someone's name, you're going to make some judgments about that person," he said. "We just launched ... a bias filter where you click the filter and you'll just see initials and no photo."

From what he's seen on Hired, women consistently have lower salaries at their current jobs, which feeds into lower salary expectations for future offers.

"Seventy percent of the time, women on the platform make less money than their male counterparts," he said. "The average was $14,000 (A$18,304) less."

IMAGE: HIRED

To help fix the issue, Hired also gives each candidate a talent advocate who acts like a "dedicated career coach."

"Our advocates work, particularly with women, to say 'hey, that's too low. I know you were making that, but you were under-market. Market is X,'" he said.

Still, only about 30 percent of the candidates on Hired are women.

The company will also diversify its candidate base internationally. While it operates in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Singapore and now Australia, Patel said they hope to reach further into central Europe and Asia.

"We want to add job categories," he added. "We think this works for all knowledge workers, not just engineers. We've launched sales and marketing in the U.S. and the UK, but there's no reason we can't do this for journalists, for nurses and for lawyers."