TeamHire
A Job Board for Teams
THE PROJECT
To conduct product-market research for a job board dedicated to the hiring of teams vs. one individual at a time. The goal of the research was to answer the fundamental question, “Should we build this product?”
HypothesES
EMPLOYERs
“Hiring individuals is slow and inefficient. Through a mutually ‘vouched-for’ team-based talent marketplace, employers can staff up a fast growing business more effectively.
”
EMPLOYEEs
“Going it alone is more difficult. Job seekers would like to leverage their network to find a job faster with the potential of working with trusted colleagues at a new company.”
Human resources INdustry Insights
The range of cost-per-hire is $1000-$4000
Time-to-hire directly correlates to cost-per-hire
The average time it takes to fill a position is 42 days
For employee retention, the avg. employee tenure is 8 years
The annual turnover rate is 19%
The involuntary turnover rate is 8%
The most-tracked metrics for recruiting teams are:
1) time-to-hire, 2) cost-per-hire and 3) retention rate73% use some talent acquisition software of some kind
(reference: Society for Human Resource Management)
Target EMPLOYER MARKET SEGMENTS
Startup Founders
Event Managers
Hotel Managers
Restaurant Managers
Retail Store Managers
Construction Managers
General Contractors
Ad Campaign Creative Directors
Nonprofit Executive Directors
Building Facilities Managers
Film Producers
Hospital Directors
target EMPLOYEE MARKET SEGMENTS
Event Production Teams
Home Renovation Teams
Software Development Teams
Finance & Accounting Teams
Cross-functional Product Teams
Film Production Crews
Human Resources Teams
Commercial Photo Shoot Teams
Nonprofit Teams
Medical Staff Teams
Industrial Design Teams
Summer Camp Staff Teams
MY ROLE
Conducted 21 qualitative remote interviews with employers and employees in key market segments.
Conducted a quantitative survey of 3217 Resume Help users with a 99% confidence level, margin of error 2.3%, and generalized to a 1M population; 34% completion rate.
Conducted secondary research on the human resources industry and various target market segments.
HEARD FROM EMPLOYEES
“The closer you are with coworkers is a huge part of keeping employees for a long time.”
“If my manager invited me to the tool, I would be slightly more comfortable as a recommendation coming from him would be a bit more convincing. He would be able say what I do well.”
Heard from Employers
“ Hiring teams usually surrounds a special project. We need seasonal temp customer service for when customers are enrolling in health insurance, as call volume spikes up.”
“The idea is interesting. The challenge in hiring a team is getting all members of the team; I am not sure how likely that would happen.”
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
EMPLOYERS
Employee engagement and retention was viewed as likely outcome of hiring people who already see themselves as a cohesive team.
Recruiters are eager to find tools that better automates the hiring process to be able to hire faster.
Most had concerns about how the interviewing process would work. Coordinating schedules through a team lead was a proposed solution.
Managers remarked that they see lower attrition from referred candidates and that employee referral programs tend to generate the best employees.
Employers observe that the referred employee often performs well out of the obligation to the referrer.
Even if the idea sounds interesting to them, there is some skepticism on how it would actually work.
“Hiring teams usually surrounds a special project.”
Many employers hire in ‘classes’, referring to group within an onboarding class, which contain several new hires at once.
EMPLOYEES
Users were attracted by the idea that they could expand their network in a team based job search.
Working with former colleagues again was largely neutral or not important to most job seekers.
Users still want to be able to get hired as an individual.
Job seekers are currently using friends and former co-workers as a way to get hired, but use job boards much more.
Having trust and familiarity lowers stress around a coworker/friend’s reliability.
A job search partnership with a manager who can truly vouch for their skills is considered more valuable than a job search partnership with a peer.
Getting a referral from someone you know to a new company is not enough to make the jump.
Much depends on personal life considerations.
Majority said that working together with old colleagues is just ‘not so important’ to them.
recomMendations
The talent market place platform may work best for project based work vs full time positions but could easily support both scenarios.
Recommended business model: it’s free to post jobs and team profile with an optional fee for promoted ranking in search results. There would be a small service fee paid by the employer at time of the team’s hiring.
There are concerns from both employers and employees on the needed flexibility to still hire or get hired as an individual. This should be accounted for.
As an incentive for teams to use the platform, the time and money saved by the employer in hiring could translate into mutual-referral bonus given to each team member based on the teams performance during the initial 3 month probationary period.