I’m incredibly excited to be taking the covers off Digital Profile and showing the world what we’ve been working on — but just for now I wanted to share a bit of my story. I know I am not alone in being frustrated with the service recruitment agencies typically provide to digital companies. It’s not just the cost — which is usually up to 30% of an employee’s salary — but that the quality of service just isn’t there. Without really getting to know your business, job specification or the candidates, I was usually left with a deluge of calls and emails suggesting candidates who did not have the relevant skill set for the role we were recruiting to. I can’t tell you how many times I received a system engineer’s CV for the PHP developer jobs we normally advertised.
Researching the alternative ways of finding people it became clear to me that there was no single solution that addressed all the problems I and many colleagues in other digital companies were experiencing. I became increasingly convinced that there must be a better way — one that serves companies and individuals equally well as well as reducing the costs. So that’s how the idea for Digital Profile was born.
Digital Profile is aiming to overhaul digital recruitment. We don’t accept recruiters on the site, and are replacing the CV (or resume, depending on where you’re reading this!) in the application process with the titular Digital Profile. To help individuals find the right fit, companies also have Profiles showcasing their culture, benefits and projects. Our vision is of a platform that intelligently matches individuals to the right jobs using algorithms based on the skills listed by individuals and companies to pro-actively match site users — even if there’s no active job listing.
But let’s get back to the beginning. We all know that having an idea is the easy bit. Building a successful business is the tricky part. I’m inspired by Mark Twain when he says ‘The secret of getting ahead is getting started’. With those words in mind and several years’ business development under my belt, I got to work. I was fortunate to secure a six figure investment to start building a team. With talented people coming on board we were able to start fleshing out my ideas and building prototypes.