The Startup Spotlight is back. This week, I caught up with Tamer Rafla, founder of Klujo.
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What is your background?
I hold a Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Software Engineering and in business administration (MBA) from top Canadian schools. Prior to founding Klujo, I worked as a management consultant and led business several transformation initiatives for clients in the high-tech, travel and pharmaceutical industries. With several publications in leading academic journals, I am also often called upon to peer review scientific submissions in the software space.
Tell us about the team you have built so far.
We’re a small but diverse group of people with deep skills and experience across many aspects of building, launching, and running technology products.
What financial support did you have to launch the business?
We are very fortunate to have been able to bootstrap Klujo. We’ve tapped in our savings and liquidated several short-term investments in order to launch the first iteration of the social recruiting platform.
What problem are you trying to solve?
We sincerely believe that social recruiting is broken. Posting jobs and expecting quality applications to start pouring is an unrealistic requirement as good talent is employed while the best remain hidden. If today’s recruitment campaigns are about developing communities, the future should be about creating value in such communities. So instead of establishing a one-way communication with fans through frequent job postings and the occasional recruiting post, organizations need to provide an unparalleled candidate experience by showcasing their employer brand and engaging with their fans.
Describe the business, core products and services?
Klujo creates a “careers” tab on the organization’s Facebook page and uses a proprietary gamification technology to provide an unparalleled talent experience. It injects gaming elements in the application and assessment process to disguise it as a fun and competitive activity. It makes it much more likely to convert the top talent from just noticing job opening into engaged candidates who are interested in working with you.
Who do you expect your customers and users to be at launch?
We’ve built a solid pipeline of interested beta users, with the most interest coming from reputable B2C companies that are interested in leveraging the synergies between marketing with recruitment efforts for optimal results.
Where do you stand right now with regard to funding?
We hope to continue to bootstrap this venture until the point our growth is being hindered by a lack of capital. We’re in a position where we don’t need outside financing, but we are confident that a Series A round would eventually be needed to scale our growth.
What is the business AND revenue model? What is your strategy for profitability?
Organizations can create basic job postings and even share them across several social networks for free. They would just pay for the gaming elements they would wish to use. The technology comes with an exhaustive list of scientifically proven gaming elements with some to be used stand-alone to engage fans while others attached to job postings to keep fans engaged.
Not all the gaming elements can be used by employers from the get-go. Only a small set is available in the beginning, and as employers become frequent users of the technology, new elements will be unlocked and presented to them.
Did anyone tell you this wasn’t going to be successful?
Absolutely. As a matter of fact, most of the recruiters we spoke to wouldn’t admit that current social recruiting practices are ineffective. The gamification of HR is still a relatively new concept and we are facing an uphill battle in educating these recruiting professionals how to gain more value from their social recruitment campaigns.
How will you measure success 12 months from now?
We will manage success in 2 ways – customer success and customer acquisition. Success will first be measured by the improvement of our clients’ bottom lines as a result of the use of Klujo. We believe growth will then happen organically once our customers realize the value of being able to easily and efficiently tap into their fan community to elevate their brand and attract quality talent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-i5x-Ow5X4