Recsolu gets $6M to change the college hiring process

by Garrett Reim
November 24, 2014
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There is often a wide gap between the skills college graduates have and the skills corporations want. Unfortunately, even when there is a match between the two, both sides may not develop a relationship. To help make connecting more direct and coherent, Recsolu, a campus recruiting software ompany, has just raised a $6 million Series A.
 
Recsolu started in 2008 and focuses closely on the process of hiring college graduates. Because so much of the college recruiting process is still done in person, Recsolu has focused on automating college career fairs and candidate relationship management.
 
“Leading employers spend a lot of time and energy going on campus to develop relationships with students and key influencers on campus,” said co-founder and CEO Jason Weingarten. “Some of our clients will have 80 to 100 people focused on college recruiting.” 
 
To make that effort more efficient Recsolu is a sort of CRM for recruitment, or rather a candidate relationship management software program. The software helps employers manage relationships with prospective candidates throughout the application process or over many years when there might not even be an immediate match available. 
 
“I want to hire a student who is a sophomore but I might have to have a relationship with that student,” said Weingarten. “I need to spend time recruiting that individual over the next couple of years, so they are top of mind.”
 
To do that efficiently and in cordination with a large recruitment department, a software program like Recsolu is helpful.
 
While Recsolu seems a bit like a CRM, the process is not exactly like closing sale.
 
“The unique nature of recruiting is that your job is the product you are selling,” said Weingarten.
 
Recruiting has the added dimension of not only selling a company on a candidate, but ensuring fit. “You might be qualified and you might not. Our software provides a lot of brand insurance.” 
 
That is, when things don’t work out, Recsolu helps recruiters stay on good terms with good candidates by managing the relationship.
 
Recsolu also has a feature called RecPass, that is designed to help manage the efficiency of recruiting events. It has a QR Code scanning feature that allows recruiters to get digital resume copies from candidates simply by scanning their badges. This eliminates a lot of the hassle around paper resumes and improves the information immediately available for in-person meetings. If used right, it could improve the return on investment from such efforts too.
 
Weingarten talks a lot about recruiting ROI. Part of Recsolu’s software is dedicated to tracking recruiting metrics, features which should help companies determine which career fair and colleges are worthwhile and which one’s aren’t, furthering disciplining the recruitment processes around the most profitable activities.
 
The company has also started selling a version of its software for recruitment of employed persons, instead of students. Weingarten believes the relationship management process is similar in the professional world as well. By building good relationships with employed professionals, companies should be able to stay top of mind when those processionals are ready to change jobs. Weingarten also envisions a recruiting process that may deliver some analytics in real time, perhaps even telling certain recruits to meet certain companies at career fairs because of possible matches.
 
Recsolu plans to use some of its $6 million Series A fund to build out these additional analytics capabilities and to market its existing software. To build and sell these new products Weingarten said the company would be hiring additional software development and sales staff. Investors in the company's latest round included First Analysis and former investor, Generations Capital.
 
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