As the novel coronavirus roils the economy, startups and tech firms are being hit—hard.
Last week, the New York Times approximated that at least 6,000 startup employees had been laid off or furloughed as a direct result of the coronavirus. At BostInno, we've confirmed 12 local companies have let go of workers across roles and regions over the last three weeks.
To connect those workers with recruiters, another Boston company has stepped up to the plate: Drafted, the 14-person startup focused on hiring and referrals that launched in 2015.
On Monday, the startup debuted "Layoffs by Drafted," a platform where managers and coworkers of departing employees can give them an official endorsement, or a "nomination." Recruiters and hiring managers can comb through the all nominations on what Drafted calls its "talent feed."
"We're not trying to make yet another job board-matching AI app," Drafted CEO Vinayak Ranade told BostInno. "We're trying to mirror what happens in real life in a slightly more scalable way, which we think will make it faster and easier to make connections. People already jump through hoops and walk through fire and wade through spreadsheets... We're trying to do all that stuff for them, so they can focus on just getting the introductions."
Ranade said that Layoffs by Drafted came together in just over a week. The startup's entire team redirected their energy to this project almost hackathon-style, working nights and weekends to pull the product together.
In the beta version before Monday's launch, more than 50 companies signed up for hiring, including Fortune 500 companies and startups. More than 100 recruiters are represented on the platform, Ranade said.
When Drafted launched, its bread and butter was streamlining referral bonuses by giving people the chance to win large cash rewards for successfully referring a job applicant to a company. It has since pivoted to more broadly connecting candidates with hiring managers; it also offers employers a desktop analytics app to see data on candidates viewing and applying for their listings.
Layoffs by Drafted, then, is not out of line with the company's original mission. In fact, it's not even the first layoffs-focused project the team has undertaken.
About nine months ago, Drafted's team began working on "the Layoff List," an information source about rumored and confirmed layoffs at startups and tech firms. Ranade said it started out as a side project that has since taken off. Today, the Layoff List is a multi-pronged effort spearheaded by Drafted referral hiring expert Olivia Clarke. It consists of a list of companies that have made cuts, a tipline so employees can give Clarke a heads-up about layoffs and a weekly newsletter aggregating all this information.
"Starting sometime in late February was when we noticed an uptick in both the subscriptions and the tips coming in," Ranade said. "We weren't 100 percent sure it was happening because of COVID-19. But when it totally spiked in march, we were like, okay, this is why it’s happening."
In the span of about five weeks, the Layoff List went from about 1,000 subscribers to nearly 5,000, with readers running the gamut from candidates and hiring managers to news reporters and investors. "They want to be the first to hear about changes to big companies," Ranade said.
Making layoffs is never an easy decision. When corporate travel startup Lola.com made cuts, CEO Mike Volpe implored hiring managers elsewhere to "act fast" to snap up those employees while they were still on the job market.
Ranade and the Drafted team acknowledge that reality, along with the fact that as the U.S. moves further into recession territory, its new products will likely grow.
"Our objective is always to help the companies and the people getting laid off," Ranade said. "We're not trying to bash anyone or be snarky. The company that just had a layoff—that sucks. That's a really hard thing. The people in the company are hurting. The people who got laid off are hurting. We don't want to kick them while they're down. Our objective is to help them while they're down."
