Learn more about the startups coworking in our London office in our Startup Spotlight. Each month we will be giving you insight into the Startups based in the Rainmaking Loft. This month we are thrilled to introduce you to TalentPool.

TalentPool is a candidate sourcing platform, used by small and high-growth businesses to find and hire interns and graduates.

Tom & Andrew are the Co-founders of TalentPool and here is their entrepreneur stories:

Finding the right job is always hard, but never more so than at the beginning of your career. Our mission is to make it easier.

What attracted you to become entrepreneurs?

Tom: It was more a case of the idea attracting us than ‘entrepreneurship’ per se. We identified a need for an intelligent and streamlined platform-based recruitment solution in late 2011 - Andrew and I were working together as consultants at the time. And the more we looked into it, the more we were convinced there was something to it. So we started up very small - evenings and weekends - and grew from there.

How did the idea of TalentPool came about?

It was really through experience - both of us being a recent university graduate seeking a job, and then being on the other side of the fence, working for a large employer and seeing how inefficient the system was. It was when we researched the issue in more detail that we got to grips with the very specific challenges faced by SMEs and startups - and indeed for people interested in joining a smaller business. So we wanted to solve this; make that search and discovery process much less painful for both sides and the ultimate result of that is TalentPool.

Why did you choose to focus on young professionals?

Initially because we were (and still are) young professionals ourselves. We think we understand the dynamics of this space better than any other. However, there is also a strategic case here; the energy and enthusiasm that less experienced people bring to the table arguably adds more value to a small business than a large one. And then, of course, we’re a tech solution and the younger generations are always more willing to experiment with alternative approaches like ours.

What were the biggest struggles in your startup/entrepreneur journey?

Getting our initial funding was obviously challenging - unless you have a few billionaire friends or a business case with microscopic levels of risk, it’s always going to be. But we got there and launched, fully funded, in January 2015. The next round was easier, of course, because we had proved our case to a certain degree. In fact, the period of greatest instability in our short history was due to a rather unhappy cocktail of illness and jury service. From a team of 6, there were 2 weeks mid-2015 with just one person in the office! That was tricky to manage but we got there. It really showed us the criticality of each member of the team - and how vulnerable small businesses are, in particular, to personnel challenges. Concept validation right there!

Do you have any advice for the other entrepreneurs to be?

Start it yesterday. There are, in reality, very few genuinely legitimate reasons to wait to get going.

 

What are the next steps and the vision for TalentPool?

The past few months have been about consolidation. If we’re being honest, our platform wasn’t as robust as it should have been until recently. So we’ve done a big re-build, deploying everything we have learned and built something that is truly ready to scale - that is to say it can withstand massive volumes of activity and will do so over a period of years. We grew a lot last year; whether by activity, user numbers or revenue, we multiplied by more than 10 times over 12 months. We now need to do the same again - and more. It’s about getting the word out there and letting employers and candidates know that hiring needn’t be so painful - or expensive.

 

How did coworking in the Rainmaking Loft help your business? 

We can’t speak highly enough of the Rainmaking Loft. We used to have our own office in Covent Garden, which we were chuffed about. I think we thought it was pretty good going to be in the middle of London at such an early stage. But what we missed was the environment; being amongst so many businesses at such a similar stage is fantastic, both socially and professionally. And it’s also a real booster to look around the floor and see other people cracking on with their own projects; it really helps to engender a culture of focus and ambition in our team. Thank goodness the property developers rolled in and kicked us out of the old place!  

 

Visit their website: http://www.talentpool.com 

Want to join our coworking community? Get in touch with us at [email protected]