Tech start-up launches developer recruitment platform in the UK

A new tech start-up is taking on the traditional IT recruitment market with a new platform that looks set to challenge the way technical teams are headhunted and hired by organisations in the UK.

talent.io is a selective recruitment platform that brings together innovative firms with talented developers. Each week, it handpicks the best candidates (around 10%) from a pool of weekly sign ups – based on their skills and availability – and companies use the platform to interact with them during a two-week session. They connect with the developers that best suit their needs and send job descriptions including salary range as well as request interviews. If candidates are interested, both sides meet and the process goes on, with talent.io staff on hand to provide salary negotiation advice and more.

This new breed of recruitment company is already disrupting the market in Central Europe and now plans to shake up the UK market.

John Hazelton, Country Manager UK at talent.io, said: “Our platform is designed to take the pain out of hiring people. No more middlemen, no more time wasting and no more irrelevant candidates. We are human-centric too; we are not a sales team focused on getting our numbers up and we don’t use algorithms to select candidates. talent.io is made up of engineering industry experts who put the customer service back into recruitment. We bring quality job offers to quality developers because we truly understand their needs and wants. Traditional recruitment agencies are very focused on client care and focus very little on the candidates. This model is failing the IT industry, and we are seeing a big shift towards our model.”

talent.io arrives in the UK following a successful launch in France last year and six months after launching in Germany. The platform has proved so successful that, just three months after its beta launch, talent.io raised $2.2 million (£1.5 million) from venture capitalists Alven Capital, Elaia Partners and Ventech, as well as a few business angels. Since then, over 1,000 companies including Adobe, Ubisoft and AXA have used the platform to save time in hiring the best talent. In fact, 60% of developers contacted by these firms agreed to an interview. Nearly a third of the recruitments were made in less than two weeks, and 42% in less than four weeks.

Now the company plans to replicate the platform’s success in the booming UK tech industry, and has ambitions to take market share away from traditional IT recruitment agencies. Big brands including TransferWise, notonthehighstreet.com and Arcadia Group are signed up for the launch, ready to connect with a fresh batch of developers looking for jobs with salaries of £35k to £100k.

Jonathan Azoulay, Founder of talent.io, said: “Despite the uncertain economy that lies ahead, London remains the number one tech ecosystem in Europe, and it’s been given a boost after Apple, Google and Facebook recently announced plans to hire more staff in the UK.

“As more companies follow suit, and new start-ups launch, we will see a huge increase in demand for developers. Our platform brings them all together in one place and makes recruiting easy. It also enables the mobility of technical teams between the UK, France and Germany as, for some organisations, hiring on home soil is no longer enough. talent.io is a direct and scalable service for selective recruitment, and we believe it will be a game-changer in the industry.”