SCOTTISH recruitment technology firm VizCareer has landed two major deals to kick off a year of expansion.
The company has developed proprietary video-first software which allows recruiters to run the entire hiring process from advertising roles to appointing successful candidates on a single platform.
Now it has signed deals with Scotland’s leading recruitment portal, s1jobs, and prominent talent, recruitment, and business consultancy firm the Taranata Group.
The Glasgow-based company has appointed a new high-profile chairman in Scottish Tech Army founder and successful global technology entrepreneur and investor Alistair Forbes to lead its growth, along with recruitment industry specialist Shannon McKechnie, previously a director at recruitment firm Search, as its first Client Relationship Director.
CEO and co-founder Connor Haggerty said: “We have spent the last couple of years investing in the development of our technology and we are now poised to make 2021 a breakout year.
“The deals with s1 and Taranata are major milestones for us and give strong validation of our business and technology, marking the start of the next phase of growth of VizCareer.
“We have very ambitious plans, including significant growth in the team. We have eight people in the team at the moment, but we expect that to grow to 25 by the end of this year and reach 50 by the end of 2022.”
Connor founded VizCareer with his father, recruitment industry expert Steve Haggerty, in 2017.
Steve, founding director of executive search firm Munro Consulting and now a non-executive director of VizCareer, said: “I could see the way the recruitment industry was moving increasingly towards being video-first.
“The problems we addressed initially were recruitment efficiency and cost. There wasn’t really a single platform on which you could run an entire recruitment process from start to finish, with video at its core.
“My many years within the sector meant that I had a pretty good idea of what that platform should look and feel like, and I knew the timing was right for disrupting the sector by applying video across the entire recruitment process.”
VizCareer’s platform combines marketing of jobs and assessment of candidates using video at its core. It allows an entire recruitment process to be planned and deployed in minutes, on any device and in any place. This includes an industry-first development enabling businesses to run large-scale assessment and development centres on the VizCareer platform.
Several blue-chip clients, including ExxonMobil and Edrington, have been using VizCareer’s technology for recruitment campaigns over the last couple of years, and the deals with s1jobs and Taranata extend VizCareer’s market from end-user organisations into the professional recruitment sector.
Steve added: “The s1 deal is a partnership in which we will be the exclusive provider of all video services that s1 will sell on its platform.
“s1 is the dominant player in Scotland – it carries approximately 22,000 jobs per month on the s1jobs platform, and we anticipate a rapid growth in uptake of video by offering the s1 client base the highest-quality video products to augment the new s1 platform. Combined with the s1 advertising platform, our intention is to make video solutions accessible to all and offer unrivalled value to customers via a true end-to-end solution.”
The Taranata Group comprises some of Scotland’s leading recruitment companies, with five ‘talent brands’, including Head Resourcing, Change Recruitment and Head Medical. It has 130 staff delivering recruitment services around the world.
VizCareer CEO Connor explained: “We are now a strategic technology partner with Taranata and the insights we gain from working with them will allow us to address market demands for video products and incorporate development changes to our platform to fulfil these demands.”
VizCareer is working on further strategic partnerships as well as building its direct client base, and is planning its funding strategy to enable it to capitalise on the opportunities it has identified.
New Chairman Alistair Forbes said: “When I began talking to Steve and Connor I saw the potential in VizCareer immediately. The talent and recruitment industry had to adopt video technology across the board in 2020, but the solutions available are very limited, with companies having to use a fragmented set of tools and having no solution for more sophisticated needs, such as video advertising and assessment centres.
“The timing could not be more opportune for VizCareer and there is a huge global market that the company can address. The cost and efficiency benefits of using the VizCareer platform are significant, but more importantly it resonates perfectly with the need for more flexible approaches to talent acquisition and allows companies to view the world as their talent pool in a way that has never been seen before.”
