When we last caught up with the Detroit-based startup HiredMyWay in April 2012, CEO Matt Mosher said the company had roughly 20,000 job seekers paying a premium to guarantee that their resumes would be read by hiring manager. The company also had plans to expand into five additional markets: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Cleveland, and Houston.
Then, as it often does with startups entering unchartered territory, the market pushed the company in a different direction. “I’ve been a lifelong entrepreneur—the thing is, I’m a risk taker,” Mosher explains. “I get into a business I don’t about intimately and, as I learn, I morph the model.”
Mosher says his assumption—that recruiters and human resources departments needed a more efficient system to deliver high-quality resumes—wasn’t quite right. He discovered that hiring managers rely on quantity, too. “My assumption wasn’t accurate, so we shifted,” Mosher says. “Before, job seekers would invest to be in a smaller pool. The model was providing great candidates, but not enough of them.”
Where Mosher saw an opportunity was in the vast array of places to advertise job openings that employers had to choose from. Sure, these job boards provided quantity, but Mosher discovered employers also needed a better approach to targeting candidates that was both data-driven and centrally managed.
Now, HiredMyWay is an online marketing platform partnered with about 40 job boards, aggregators, and social media sites that allows employers to reach candidates through one centralized portal. Using parameters like location of job, type of job, years of experience required, and others, HiredMyWay determines in real time where a hiring manager should list a job opening. The company also works to secure premium placement so the job posting gets maximum visibility.
Mosher says it’s a heavily sales-based model, with employers paying up front for HiredMyWay’s services. Because the company is targeting the same hiring managers and recruiters it was delivering resumes to before, Mosher says the new model wasn’t a terribly hard sell and has “really taken off,” already generating income.
The Detroit Venture Partners-backed HiredMyWay now wants to continue to grow, prove its metrics, and attract further investment as it considers embarking on a Series B round. “We want to be considered the go-to place for job posters,” Mosher adds.
