How a startup is seeking to disrupt the recruitment industry by using the cloud

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Srikanth RP.

WinHire Technologies is seeking to disrupt the recruitment market by building the world’s first video social recruitment portal By Srikanth RP, InformationWeek, July 17, 2012

As a late entrant, how do you compete in a market that is already dominated by giants? As a small player with limited ability to capital, how do you scale up without any limits? Startup WinHire Technologies was grappling with these questions, as it rapidly scouted for solutions that could help the firm take advantage of technology and level the playing field with the giants.

WinHire Technologies had a radically different idea. Instead of text-based resumes, the firm wanted to use videos and the reach of the Internet to simplify and improve the process of recruitment. “We wanted to leverage the power of the Internet and the popularity of videos to create the world’s first video social recruitment and networking website,” says Giri Devanur, CEO, WinHire Technologies. On the portal, a job-aspirant can upload his or her video profile, and increase his or her chance of getting hired, as a video can even highlight personality attributes…

While this concept is simple to understand, executing this business model was a huge challenge. As the firm wanted to leverage videos, WinHire needed to invest heavily in the support technologies and infrastructure. However, being an emerging enterprise, the firm did not want to invest heavily in capital expenditure upfront. After evaluating potential technology options, the firm realized that the cloud was perfectly suited to its needs.

Cloud power

WinHire selected IBM’s IaaS solution to develop and test its portal. The offering helped WinHire avoid upfront capital expenditure on computing infrastructure. Using the pay-as-you-go IaaS model, WinHire could globally deploy its application much faster via automation and rapid provisioning to create the required competitive edge.

The IBM IaaS solution provided WinHire rapid access to multi-tenant shared cloud computing infrastructure that could be scaled to the needs of the business. “Using the cloud, we could put together a globally scalable infrastructure, with a significant cost benefit ratio of 1:80. More importantly, it has helped us in getting our infrastructure up and ready in just 15 days compared to the traditional timeframe of 6-8 months,” opines Devanur.

"We are a 100 percent cloud company. We live in the cloud and without the cloud, we will be out of oxygen"

WinHire’s business model is unique as the potential of social media in the recruiting process is not yet leveraged widely in the recruitment industry. By providing a platform for virtual interaction between job-seekers and recruiters, the firm is on its way to create a difference. For example, using the transformative power of the cloud, WinHire can build and implement a shared collaborative hiring capability which would be able to address challenges like identity fraud in the recruitment process. It can also replace the early stage of faceless communication with interactive video interview capability.

The cloud gives WinHire the capability to plan and scale for the future. “When you have higher volumes of video resumes, we can quickly scale up without worrying about infrastructure related issues,” states Devanur. The cloud capability also gives the firm the ability to test out its portal on new mobile platforms.

Breathing in the cloud

WinHire is a perfect example of a company that owes its existence and its business model to the cloud. Without the cloud, the firm would have never been able to launch such a business model – especially when it had limited resources as a startup company.

Devanur sums this up perfectly, when he says, “We are a 100 percent cloud company. We live in the cloud and without the cloud we will be out of oxygen.”

If WinHire does succeed in disrupting the marketplace with its innovative approach, it can inspire many entrepreneurs who have a fantastic business model, but lack the resources to invest in the technology infrastructure. The cloud can level the playing field, and allow startups to compete in a much more effective manner, as it is already doing for a number of companies.