Q. Please tell us about yourself.
We are three entrepreneurs who were working as a team for over three years developing SaaS and PaaS platform at July Systems. All the co-founders have been working with startups for more the 10+ years and have experience developing multiple product.
Q. When did you discover Hirenodes?
We all have been working as a part of various start-ups for almost a decade now, we’ve always had problems with hiring of good resources. It was during this time that we realized every organization faced hiring issues. After some research he understood that referrals formed the best source of hires.
We launched referral-based platforms in early 2015 and solution was used by various clients. Unfortunately, as they had found road block, when social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook restricted their API access.
When we were working with Hirenodes clients, we discovered that Rapid rise in the number of technologies is a challenge for many companies, to hire a full time staff every time and acquiring new skills for exiting employees is not very time and cost effective for small companies.
Soon, we pivoted our approach and we launched Hirenodes freelancers discovery platform in august 2015.
The team decided to solve it by connecting local freelancers directly to employers. I believe that it was easier to connect with a freelancer near you, speak to them directly and, if possible, hire someone who can work out of the client’s office to complete tasks. We know finding a freelancer nearby isn’t the only thing solving the problem hence we introduced referrals in our flow. Referrals have been around for a while and is the most trusted source of hiring.
Q. Introduce your Co-Founders and Team.
Our team includes three co-founders (including me) and interns. All the co-founders have 10+ years of experience in product industry and worked together for last 5 years.
Pankaj Goyal (Me) has 11+ years experience in multiple startups and PaaS Product Development. He has been working with startup since the beginning of his career. Started with Picsquare (online photo printing and customize gift portal). Picsquare was acquired by Infibeam.
Sunil Sant has 12+ Years of experience in building SaaS products and Scalable solutions. He worked for 7 years with July systems. He created and managed unique service platform for Intel next generation chips.
Shiva Kumar has 10+ years of experience in technology and has developed many solution using open source technology. He has Developed a SaaS SOA container service for high performance and reliability.
Q. Tell us more about Hirenodes, what makes you special and how is it different from other similar companies?
By using freelancers, start-ups’ can reduce time to hire, get to market quickly; start-ups’ can always hire full-time employees later when they have great customer traction and money in the bank. One can always hire the freelancer, if he/she is a good fit for the company, rather than hire someone based on few interviews. Hirenodes was built on the idea of finding a freelancer in the same city to make it easy for the employers to have the freedom of one on one work environment. As the time progressed we decided to introduce the already tested and proven referral feature. This helped our users to find that trust factor of hiring a freelancer known by someone in their network, which earlier we never had.
Q. What challenges did you face while setting up Hirenodes?
Start-ups’ have a zillion problems to counter and overcome — the intense competition for customer, market and venture capital money, and the list goes on. The hardest part of being a startup is finding the right talent full time or freelancers. We struggled a lot finding a good designer. We hired freelancers from outside India and ended up paying money without getting satisfied work. Challenge was always explaining the requirement and following up time lines. We approached to our network and found someone who helped us. now we had our own App and its not a big challenge any more. We found some great freelancers on our app only and got some important work done efficiently.
As we mentioned earlier when social media restricted their API access, it was major road block for us. We talked to many entrepreneurs, understood their need and came with a better freelance solution.
Work is always more and manpower is less in a start-up. So we had to prioritize work and cope up with day to day tasks. Without losing the focus.
Success always comes to those who work hard for it, I personally believe success will come to the ones who will work smart for it. Roadblocks will come, but that is probably a synonym for start-up. And, those who use it as a catalyst to move to a higher, more productive place can only achieve great success in life. Not to lose focus and being positive no matter how worse the situation gets I think is the key to success.
Q. What’s the Current status and Future plans?
Currently we are an android only app with nearly 10,000 users with more than 800 jobs posted on our platform. We like to interact with our users over social media or any other means of communication with prompt and helpful replies. We will be launching our IOs app in the very near future. There is no doubt that the startup market seems to face a massive talent crunch. Reports say that 45 per cent of Asia Pacific employers have had difficulty filling job vacancies due to lack of talent. Close to 67 per cent Indian startups reported difficulty in filling job vacancies versus a global average of 34 per cent. Almost 10% of the software professionals in the India is contract staff and number is expected to touch 25% in India in the next 5 years and we are looking forward to make the most of it.
Q. If you would like, you can share your feedback about VID
I stumbled across VID on the web and was very intrigued by the stories published on your website. There were some very inspirational and motivating content, which made me reach out to you in the hopes of telling of our story. You guys have given people in this world a platform to share their journey; their journey from being nothing to something and inspire many more people who are planning to do something valuable with their lives. It is one such platform which not only inspires about also educates future entrepreneurs and help them learn from what others have gone through. Team Hirenodes is truly honored with the opportunity to be featured on VID.
VID Team wish you and your team all the very best for your endeavor, Thank you for sharing your story and this wonderful feedback.