Capital Region startup Hirebird is preparing to debut its flagship feature.
Hirebird is software that uses a dating app format to match job candidates — predominantly students and new graduates — with companies seeking employees. It's powered by an artificial intelligence program that can compare resumes and job descriptions and generate a compatibility score.
Starting May 1, companies and employees will officially begin matching on Hirebird.
The overall goal is to shorten the hiring process. When candidates and employers match by swiping on one another — like on dating apps Tinder or Hinge — they can schedule a meeting through the platform, and candidates can track where their resume is in the review process.
Co-founder Sam Hogan said Hirebird's value proposition is that companies pay per successful hire — it's roughly $80-$350 per hire, whereas going through traditional recruiting methods could cost $1,500-$3,000.
In the months leading up to the launch, Hirebird has been working on landing investment deals and tailoring its platform to the employers that need it most.
Launch of the hiring platform approaches
As it has begun to onboard companies to the platform, Hirebird has narrowed its initial focus to start with the health care industry.
Hogan and Ryan Manocherian started the company in October, and have since taken meetings with interested companies like JP Morgan, Crumbl Cookies, General Mills, Broadview Federal Credit Union and Stewart's Shops. But they decided to mainly start with health care because it's a candidate-driven field.
Hogan said Hirebird has talked with a dozen health care networks, clinics and small hospitals over the last month and learned that the demand for nurses, patient care assistants, at-home nurses and other frontline jobs is outpacing the supply.
"What we wanted to ultimately do is take this grassroots approach where we can go and find those students and the people who are entering the workforce with the proper certifications and ultimately give them that direct connection to a company the second they graduate," he said. "So we've been able to tap into a market by getting a lot of health care students on board."
To grow that user base, Hirebird has also recruited 25 on-campus ambassadors to advertise the platform to its target audience of students. The approach is inspired by other Gen Z platforms that achieved viral success, like Barstool Sports and BeReal.
"A lot of these Gen Z community apps, they all started from the patient-zero perspective, where they implanted one person on a campus and ultimately it spread virally. And that's what we're trying to do right now," Hogan said.
The company has also added more features to Hirebird. It added a short personality test that helps companies learn more about the person behind the resume, Hogan said. It has 20 short questions to be answered on a sliding scale to help the algorithm better match candidates to jobs.
Hirebird has some key advisers guiding it to launch. That list includes Nolan Farris, the former chief revenue officer for Indeed, and Jim Pascarell, CEO/president of Pivotal Optics and a University at Albany professor. It's also brought on a chief technology officer, Dan Lannan, an RPI graduate and founder of another tech startup, Thin Air.
Hirebird looks to raise seed round
For its seed round, Hogan said the company is now looking to raise $1.4 million. The idea for that round is to provide enough runway to sustain the company for 18 months.
So far, Hirebird has $250,000 in hard commitments for funding. Hogan said he's also been in conversation with angel investors across the country for potential deals.
Hogan has been aggressively pursuing venture capital funding and has been doing a lot of pitching in New York City, but he's still interested in adding Capital Region investors as well.
"We've been able to get in front of a lot of VCs and we've actually run cold email campaigns to get in front of them too. I sent out a blast campaign the other day of 760 emails to VCs with our pitch deck and talking about what we do, and we had almost 30 or 40 people sign up for meetings with us. It's been really cool to see the traction that's come from that," he said.
