Recruiting is a time-consuming and expensive activity, yet it’s critical for every company to hire the right talent. Despite recent advances in recruiting tools to make hiring more automated and efficient, the role of the human recruiter is as important as ever. There’s an art and psychology to candidate sourcing, interviewing, and closing, and candidates are much more likely to chat with someone they know or are connected to via a warm intro. Employers want access to experienced recruiters with proven results, at an affordable price. While billions of dollars are spent on recruiting firms and agencies to help augment searches – especially for specialized roles – the industry has hardly evolved over the last two decades.
We believe there’s an opportunity for a technology platform that connects companies to quality recruiters with vast networks. Even with the waves of layoffs in the economy over this past year, there are still companies that need to fill roles, including many in the Greylock portfolio. And the industry has a talented pool of recruiters who want to start their own businesses.
I am excited to share our seed investment in HeadRace, which is working to transform the recruiting experience by building a recruiting cloud.
With HeadRace, employers can find the right recruiter(s) to help them fill a role, whether through handpicked recommendations or by posting an opportunity for recruiters to bid on. Unique to HeadRace, recruiters in the network can collaborate with each other to fill open roles faster and more easily. As the only platform that shows recruiters’ placement records, employers have added peace of mind that they are working with accomplished recruiters who are qualified for the job.
For recruiters, HeadRace offers opportunities to connect with new customers, earn, and ultimately build a business. HeadRace’s software helps independent recruiters save on overhead costs like legal and payment processing – supporting everything from retained executive, container, or contingent searches, to even finding alternate opportunities for final-round candidates.
HeadRace was founded by Laszlo Korsos (CEO), Kevin Brinig (COO/CPO), and Amos Barreto (CTO). The three founders worked together on the Marketplace team at Uber, where they transformed the transportation industry by building an efficient marketplace. They saw an opportunity to bring their experience building networks to the recruiting industry, recognizing that the recruiting agency model is outmoded, broken and expensive. From our first conversation with the founders, it was apparent that they were very familiar with the problem, and had a clear vision for the future of recruiting.
As of today, HeadRace is now available to any recruiter or employer. While the product has been in early beta for the last few months, it’s already helped fill open roles across a variety of functions including COO, CMO, Software Engineer, Account Executive and Data Scientist.
I encourage companies who want a better hiring experience to try out the platform. And recruiters who want to start their own business can sign-up too. You can get started on HeadRace.com
