You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who is more in tune with the current workings of the modern-day job interview process than Di Tran. For the last 20 years, Tran has applied twice a week for jobs, give or take, mostly in the field of information technology (IT).
“I just recently slowed down now because I got more things to do,” said Tran, a local serial entrepreneur who runs somewhere in the vicinity of 10 different businesses, all of which are still operational.
All told, Tran estimates he has done at least 1,000 interviews as a job applicant, in addition to about 1,000 more to as a hiring manager for all of the businesses he runs under his parent company of Di Tran Enterprise, which he refers to as a “workforce development focus organization.”
“I understand the pain point of why they don't hire certain people … I am actually sitting on both sides at all times,” said Tran, who was named as one of Louisville Business First's 2021 Family Business Award finalists in the Rising Star category.
Tran’s commitment to the interview process stems from his own narrative. Before he would go onto become a top IT engineer at Humana for a total of 15 years, he experienced a period of six months after he graduated with his bachelor’s degree from University of Louisville’s J.B. Speed School for Engineering in 2006. During that time, 400-plus applications netted him four interviews.
“It stayed with me since forever,” Tran said. “And the way that I solve that problem [is] I gotta go and learn the reason why.”
What he has learned on the way has created his next startup venture, MiaHire, a Service-as-a-Software (Saas) cloud-based online platform that provides a streamlined process of finding candidates by having them automatically record initial candidate videos that pertain to the opening.
The intent is to eliminate pain points both on the end of the recruiter/HR professional (dealing with multiple recruitment sites, arranging interviews, screening résumés, to name a few) and the job applicant — while attempting to eliminate some of the biases that Tran first encountered 17 years ago by using assessments of multiple evaluators through the platform.
“This platform allows everyone to get an interview — like instantly. With this, no talent placement company is needed anymore,” said Tran, who among his titles is also the co-founder of the Louisville Beauty Academy and founder of the Louisville Institute of Technology.
Looking for traction in the U.S.
MiaHire was established in his home country of Vietnam by the company’s co-founder, Truong Dinh Hoang, a year ago with 30 companies using the service there, and an additional 10 companies using the service in Japan.
Approximately 10,000 interviews have been recorded on the system, Tran said, adding those who have used it report close to “100% satisfaction.” A majority of the interviews are for white-collar tech jobs for college graduates.
The company currently employs 172 people, most of whom live in Vietnam. The only two American representatives are Tran and his business partner, Anthony Bieda, who met Tran in 2019 through Bieda's leadership efforts with the Kentucky Association of Career Colleges and Schools.
“Di and I really focus on talking about workforce development, not higher education,” said Bieda, who also serves as the “fractional COO” of Di Tran Enterprise. “All the growth in post secondary education are the one-year and two-year programs that lead to what? Licensure to go practice [in] a technical field and get a job.”
Similar to the revenue models run by other third-party hiring sites, the platform is subscription-based with MiaHire selling by the “ticket,” which is good for one interview. The price can range from as low $4 if a company buys thousands of them to as high as $10 if they are selecting one interview.
With funding established in Asia, the software development company is hoping to find American users, adding that it is willing to offer a multi-month trial period to American companies to conduct a market test in the U.S. Later down the road, Tran said the company could be interested in working with American investors.
Ultimately, Tran wants MiaHire to be his next Louisville-based success story, by hiring an American sales team, an English-speaking support team and an American consulting team.
“I want to launch it here for a reason … I want to use this solution as the launch platform for the city to be the actual tech hub,” said Tran, who added that he hoped to have at least 10 American companies as customers and “hundreds to thousands” of job applicants in the U.S. within a year.
“I would say we’re both almost pollyannaish in our outlook for the economy,” Bieda said. “We just assume it's all upside. I know there's some downside, but we're focused on the upside.”
“I don't know the downside,” Tran added. “All I see is good stuff.”
