Beginning with this article, East Coast Connected will begin a series of features that focus on innovative businesses, services, or projects that might be of professional interest to the ECC readership.

We begin this series with Careerify, a user-focused, user-driven internet service, founded in 2009, that helps connect employers with candidates. Employing the strengths of social networks, this Toronto-based start-up company works to reduce the time it takes an employer to find a well qualified candidate, as well as the amount of time a candidate spends searching for their ideal career. Careerify uses incentive-based rewards programs and sophisticated search algorithms instead of headhunters or traditional job postings.

ECC’s Alex Willis spoke Careerify Founder and CEO Harpaul Sambhi this October.

Alex Willis: Describe how Careerify came about.

Harpaul Sambhi: It all started a few years before Careerify, actually. We began with HSTM, Harpaul Sambhi Talent Management, back when I was at the University of Waterloo. I started connecting with the business community across the country, and Toronto in particular, at the age of seventeen. I started emailing CEOs, saying, “I have nothing to offer you except my listening skills, and my willingness to connect and learn. I want to see what you do, and learn how to become a CEO.” Quite often, they would actually get back to me, and say, “Sure, Harpaul.” They’d take me under their wing, or give me a free coffee, or a lunch, or whatnot. Using these links, throughout university, I started connecting people to help them get jobs. My business mentors would come up to me and say, “Hey, we’d love to have someone for this position,” and I’d say, “I can definitely find you someone like that.” So that was the foundation for HSTM: helping people across Canada to find full-time jobs. We built it up to 26 different companies across North America. Eventually, I transformed HSTM into Careerify.

AW: So what was your vision for this transformation?

HS: The main thing from our perspective was that headhunting or job-hunting firms have a very limited service capability – you might have a thousand people, but you can’t do a thousand interviews. Now, I’m a technology person, and so I asked myself, why not have a technology to remove the hindrances in the application and hunting process? I thought about how people could find jobs through networking – 70% of jobs come through networking, and headhunters are really good at utilizing their networks to find opportunity. So if other people could use their networks to help people find jobs in addition to getting rewards – much like an RBC Visa or Mastercard – might we not do the same thing through algorithms? So rather than employing headhunters, we have an algorithm that matches employer and user requests, and then offers rewards. If you’re looking to move back to the East Coast, and there’s an opportunity there, we’ll match employer with user. Or if you are looking for a specific salary, or to gain technical or soft skills, we’ll match a job with that too.

AW: The company’s mission stems from this concept of “networking”, as it relates to human resources and headhunting. East Coast Connected is itself fundamentally concerned with networks – how they work, and who participates in them. What do networks mean to you in a personal sense, and in a professional sense?

HS: Sharing knowledge and providing opportunities for others. You can look at Facebook, or Linkedin, or Twitter, and they’re all about sharing your personal and professional experiences. What I’m interested in doing is taking concepts from all of these and helping people to find jobs. In this case, that means having an algorithm that can take your profile information and link you up with a huge list of contacts, and employers who have agreed to work with us. It’s network management, with the aim of helping connect people through very specific criteria.

AW: What distinguishes Careerify from other job boards or headhunting websites?

HS: Job sites like Monster or Workopolis focus primarily on the employer, meaning that the employers post a job, and you as a candidate have to parse the information to find a position. One thing that we really strive for is helping passive candidates. Let’s face it: over 50% of people don’t like the jobs they’re working at. They may be looking for an opportunity, but don’t have the time to engage in a full search. We use direct marketing to actually connect with people. So, say, if John comes in and creates a profile, picks what he’s looking for – where he wants to work, salary expectations, or skill development goals – we find ways to connect these criteria to the demands of employers. In a way, it’s like eHarmony, except we try to match people with companies.

AW: There’s obviously a split in your energies, then. You’ve got time spent on the company end, to meet their staffing demands, and on the candidate side, you’ve got to meet their hunting demands. How much of Careerify’s focus is on either side?

HS: It’s a Catch-22. You create a great social network, but there’s a lot of great social networks out there, so from a candidate’s point of view, it’s a question of asking what value can you add to your own network to distinguish yourself. So we need to make sure we have enough job postings and employers coming on board to attract candidates. On the other hand, employers are looking for numbers – how many candidates are in your database? So when you start off with 0-0 split between employers and candidates, it’s a chicken-egg scenario. How do you build from that? So, honestly, it’s a 50-50 split.

AW: What other techniques do you use to attract employers to Careerify?

HS: We really try to sell the “viral effect” that Careerify has, particularly through the rewards aspect – if you join, and bring on other people, and they bring on other people as well, you’ll get rewards points. Headhunters may charge salary percentages, but we don’t do that – we use the network itself to form the opportunity. So it’s a momentum-building thing.

AW: East Coast Connected has a very specialized social network – the Atlantic ex-pat living in Ontario. How do you leverage existing networks like ECC to facilitate your company’s goals?

HS: We want to see mutual strategic opportunities. How can other networks adapt or utilize our technology to facilitate their own goals? We’d love for other social networks to find people through our service, but also help them find jobs. Small organizations can really help each other, whether it be through the trading of different employment modules, or searching for how many Atlantic Canadians have gone to a particular university, and building a network that way. You could certainly build an employment network based on those kinds of affiliations.

To learn more, visit www.careerify.ca.