The startup that acts as your employee selection panel

Employee capital is critical for early-stage startups and often one of the key factors in whether a business succeeds or fails.

One Australian startup is looking to alleviate this problem by helping businesses hire the right candidates through the power of crowdsourcing.

The online platform draws on industry experts to assess prospective hires for startups and businesses that may not have the technical expertise or infrastructure to adequately vet candidates.

The cost of the assessment is then distributed between CrowdSourceHire and the panel of experts.

Co-founder Ben Liau told StartupSmart he and his other cofounders have previously worked in startups, small businesses and large corporations – and an issue across all three business types was hiring the right person for the job.

“I’ve hired people who seem bright in an interview but when they started they didn’t have the right skills,” he says.

“It’s a big issue many companies face – big and small – but startups especially.”

The startup has a very strict application process for its industry experts, which Liau says makes sense because these people are going to be vetting others.

“To date, only about 20% of the people that have actually applied to be an expert have become an expert,” he says.

“We’re pretty rigorous because that’s our main selling point and differentiates us. No one is really doing this at the moment – we need to be very particular about our experts. We want the quality not the quantity.”

CrowdSourceHire is now in its second month of the Telstra-backed muru-D program. The accelerator takes a 6% stake in companies in exchange for $40,000 in funding and access to its networks.

Liau says the fact the accelerator is backed by Telstra means his startup has access to a wide range of mentors.

“We have access to a lot of people we can talk to and it’s helped us on our way into the validation stage and we have that sounding board.”

In the new year, CrowdSourceHire plans to push for investors and afterwards look at expanding into the south-east Asia market.

“At the moment, what we’re doing is we are pushing for customer acquisitions because we’re looking at getting as much traction as we can. We’re looking at a global focus rather than just looking specifically at Australia.”

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