From 50 initial competitors, five of the most innovative recruiting startups in the world were chosen to pitch it out on the main stage of Hiring Success. Watch now!

The first annual Recruiting Startup of the Year competition from Smartrecruiters saw fledgling recruiting companies from Germany to Washington State battle it out on social media to see who could leverage their networks for the most votes, to be one of five finalists to make their pitch to the 1,000+ TA leaders and executives at Hiring Success 18.

The campaigning was fierce, but from 50 initial contestants, JobPal, Recruitsy, Talent Savant, and Recruiterly distinguished themselves as especially promising in their field and flew to San Francisco to make their case for first place at the third annual #hire18.

Before they took the stage, the startups had to meet their “Shark Tank”, aka the six judges who would determine the winner: Matt Gallo, partner at Insight Ventures; Ted Wilson, partner at Silicon Valley Bank; Tejas Maniar, Partner at Mayfield; Jeff Diana, Investor and high-growth consultant; and Rebecca Carr, Smartrecruiters’ VP of product .

The Prize was $10,000 in media spend from HR.com, an article by Talent Tech Labs’ executive Director Jonathan Kestenbaum, and a gold level sponsorship to next year’s Hiring Success Conference.

First up, JobPal. A builder of recruiting chatbots with a custom language processor built especially for recruiting. They leverage messaging applications like Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger to make the candidate experience smoother and save recruiters time.

Judge Jeff Diana said he was impressed by the 15 percent conversion rate these bots get on average, but cautioned against losing focus. “They scared me a little when they talked about moving into the broader employee experience. My advice is to go crush the recruiting market first.”

Up next we had Recruitsy. It’s Yelp meets recruiting: a public rating system of recruiters and recruitment agencies. Candidates can see reviews for individual recruiters as well as agencies, and agencies can use the platform to build their brand, target problem areas, and reach out to candidates.

Of Recruitsy, Judge Matt Gallo was convinced of the need, his only question was how they would gain critical mass?  “In these reviewer marketplaces, it tends to be a winner take all or winner take most. How will you grow quickly enough to put out competitors?”

Following these recruiter focused tools we take a look at Honeypot.io, the job board for developers and other computer engineers that turns the application process upside down by making the employers apply to candidates who are vetted by the site. Established in October 2016, this platform already has over 50,000 candidates (all of which are only on the site if they are actively seeking work) with 1,000 more signup weekly.

Honeypot.io presented an interesting conundrum to Judge Ted Wilson. “I think the approach of candidate first is unique and clearly developers are willing to sign up,” said Wilson, “but usually we talk about passive candidates as the best candidates. How do we change the narrative and convince employers that the candidates who are raising their hands for jobs are really the ones to look at?”

Recruiterly is a brand-building and social network tool for recruiters and recruiting agencies, so employers come to them. The goal is to change the perception of the recruiting industry and allow recruiters to showcase their skills.

Judge Tejas Maniar was on board for the product but he wanted to see more passion. “Recruiterly established the need superbly but I want to see a double-click on the enthusiasm and excitement.”

To wrap up we had a presentation from Talent Savant, a mission-based recruiting agency that answers staffing needs without the hard sell, outrageous prices, or irrelevant resumes. The goal is simple, get people jobs and get employers the workers they need – it’s called ‘pro-human hiring!’

Talent Savant was the only no-tech startup pitching for Recruiting Startup of the Year, but judge Rebecca Carr felt they held their own. “I think it’s great how this startup puts forth its personality,” she said. “Their brand of mission-driven recruiting gives them a unique flair and cuts through the noise.”

(Talent Savant presenting with the Recruiting Fairy)

After the presentations, the judges deliberated live on stage. The startups were appraised on the criterion of vision, do they have a mission that people can get behind? –  influence, is their idea innovative enough to break through? – and presentation, can they make people believe in their company in just five minutes?

In the end, Honeypot was awarded first place! The judges were impressed by how this job board has been able to turn candidates into active players in the employment search and want to see how the platform grows.

“In the world of startups,” says CEO and founder of SmartRecruiters, Jerome Ternynck in his closing remarks “there are no winners or losers, only hustlers working to change their world, creating and grabbing opportunities, embracing effort, and learning from every failure as well as every success – that’s really what it’s all about.

Who better to ask about recruiting brand than the man who prides himself on being everywhere in the world that Talent Acquisition gathers? (Note: four conferences in the last month alone.)

If you’re a recruiter and you hear Big Pimpin’ come on the radio, you may think of Matt Charney. Not for any illicit activity or “spendin’ cheese”, but for his particular penchant for Jay-Z themed powerpoints that accompany most his conference presentations and his undisputed honorific of “recruiting influencer”. Which is, indeed, both big and pimpin’.

See Matt Charney in Person at Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco.

We know Charney as the Chief Content Officer at Allegis Global Solutions, as well as Executive Editor at Recruiting Daily, but most of all, in an industry not always associated with saleable personality, he’s a proper brand – thousands of people in the HR space look to Charney for competent – at times, satirical – analysis of all things TA.

The influencer status isn’t just about his 24K+ Twitter followers. Twitter followers can be bought. His rep is thanks to years of experience building a tangible knowledge base, a real network, with real people, who trust you. Whether working for Disney, Warner Bros or Cornerstone, he built his brand on the simple but effective tool of “not being a dick”. No number of Tweet-Ks will get you that.

And today, he’s here to talk to us about how you can create your own great recruiter brand. But be warned, there are no shortcuts, no pay-offs, and there definitely ain’t no frontin’.

Tell us what ‘employer brand’ is.

An employer brand is set to create a highly polished image. There may be some tactical transparency, but very little. I think that what a good recruiter does, is take that image, and balance it out with some of the less filtered, honest, truth. The more you can tactfully walk back your employer brand to candidates, the more you are building a reputation of credibility.

Building ‘recruiter brand’ – is it that hard?

So here’s what I think it is: it’s simply being better than the people that are lazy.

Recruiters are extremely lazy, they try to automate everything and then even when everything’s automated then they spend a lot of time arguing the pedantics. Differentiate yourself by actually picking up the phone, being honest’ and knowing your industry.

That’s how you build a recruiter brand – by not being the guy who’s sending out emails all day.

How do you keep the two separate?

Don’t put too much emphasis on employer brand!

I worked for one little business called the Walt Disney Company, and everyone was like ‘oh my god, it must be so great to work at Disney.’ I had to recruit people for the office of the CFO, so we’re talking controllers, finance people, corporate strategists. And everyone in ‘the industry’ knew that Disney was not a great place to work, for money or for work-life balance… We paid 50 percent under market.

I would tell candidates, ‘If you want to discuss opportunities, then I’m the person who will call you back, I’m the person who will be there, and I’m the person who will be honest with you,’ and that was the game-changer, more so than any budget or campaign to build employer brand.

What then was the biggest mistake you made in building your recruiter brand?

Don’t think in terms of ‘how do I get Twitter followers?’ – these things don’t really have an impact.

For all these stupid influencer lists I make it onto, I think a free Mcdonalds hamburger via Clout might have been the best reward I’ve ever gotten. Focus on the relationships that matter, which are the people in your company.

How do you build/maintain a recruiter brand at a company that doesn’t care about hiring?

Almost every CEO says that one of their strategic imperatives is hiring, but they probably care more about shareholder value, and, if they’re a publicly traded company, that’s the way it should be.  

If you work with a CEO who doesn’t care about hiring, then you need to make it clear that the organization cares about the people. Because if the C-suite doesn’t look at human capital as a success metric, then you’ll never be able to change that.

When I worked at a company where the CEO didn’t particularly care about hiring, I could have gotten him on video to tell me how great the careers there were and how much he appreciates employees, but frankly, that was a lie, and frankly, he’s terrible on camera.

So instead I sought out other people with high hiring volume and really built relationships with them which in any organization takes some time – especially now that people don’t smoke. That’s where the real information flow happened.