Seed.jobs, an innovative approach to hiring. Web Summit preview interview

By @SimonCocking more at.

Who are you, what’s your background? 

We’re Seed.jobs, and we build software that allows companies to attract and engage talent in a whole new way by treating candidates like customers. We’re currently based in an Alice in Wonderland themed office which is pretty cool!

Where you are from?
London

Why are you planning to come to the Summit / what do you hope to get out of it?
We can’t wait for WebSummit – so many awesome companies that we want to meet and exchange ideas with. It’s a great chance to build long lasting relationships and meet interesting people.

Is there anyone in particular you’d really like to meet at the summit?
So many people. If I had to name a few – Dharmesh Shah (co-founder of Hubspot), who has essentially coined the term Inbound Marketing and created an industry; Drew Houston (Co-founder of Dropbox), I’ve heard him speak several times and you always learn something new; Mikkel Svane (CEO, Zendesk) – they have just build an awesome awesome company and we are avid Zendesk users.

Why Dublin, what do you think about Dublin relative to elsewhere?
We think Paddy has created an incredible event here. It’s gone from tiny beginnings in 2010 to the scale of arguably the best Tech conference in the world. Ireland has taken a long term view on the technology community and I really think it’s paying off. All the big guys are here now, Google, Amazon, Dropbox  – they opened an office here before London. I think we will be seeing quite a few billion dollar companies coming out of Ireland over the next decade.

What are you working on?
We’ve developed a SaaS platform that brings inbound marketing and data science to recruitment. Our software automates the complex task of combining data from a range of sources that includes emails, calendars and social networks to enable recruiters to become effective marketers and prioritize the best talent at the right time.

What is awesome about it?
Recruiting sucks, everyone knows that. What makes it worse is that the technology available to recruiters is pretty terrible. It’s often old databases plagued with tons of manual entry. So we set out to build something that was much much better. No manual entry, no contact scrubbing, no busy work – software that just works and lets recruiters get back to actually talking to candidates. We collect a lot of data and use predictive analytics to help recruiters to identify trends and set priorities and be proactive not reactive in the way they hire.

Where do you hope to be in 3 – 5 years time?
Over the last 5 years the way companies market and sell product online has evolved dramatically. You would not let your customer go through tons of forms before buying a product – you would lose almost everyone. You would not send them generic email. Marketing has evolved to become engaging and personalised.

We are seeing the same trends starting to happen in Recruitment, and we are focused on creating the tools and technology that really lets companies treat candidates like they treat customers.

What is the broadband / wifi like where you are based?
Temperamental. Fortunately we’re moving to the awesome new WeWork office in Blackfriars where we are assured it’s much better!

Do you have any good workaround for power outages or other local tech restraints? (when I worked in Namibia termites were a problem, eating cables)
We’ve had plenty of occasions where the internet was out – a couple of times went to a coffee shop with our laptops. In London usually there is wifi somewhere. Fortunately no termites here as far as I know

Social media, which ones do you use, what for?
We think LinkedIn and Twitter are great as a business. We make sure our whole team is active there – they’ve both helped us engage with potential customers and influencers in the recruitment space. LinkedIn group discussions have been a particularly effective tactic.

What sort of results is it bringing you?
We have an inbound sales focus and the majority of our business leads come from the combination of our blog and social media.

What should I have asked you?
About our team. We are very proud of our team – we have incredibly smart engineers building fantastic technology. We are very international, and I think between us we speak 8 languages and that makes our culture pretty unique.