How this startup is solving the Zigsaw puzzle of recruitment
Ever imagined that a comment in Facebook can land you a job offer???Well that’s what Vaibhav Chouhan ,founder of Zigsaw Consultancy services is doing .With his vision to simplify the process of recruitment both for the recruiters as well as candidates this IIT-Guwahati graduate has started up with his venture Zigsaw Consultancy Services.
According to him
“ Recruitment sector is highly disorganized. There are people who need Jobs & then there are companies that need candidates. The good thing from business perspective is that both are willing to pay & business exists on both the models. We intend to create an online community where Job seekers can openly & independently interact with Employers. We have incentivized the whole system of sourcing profiles.”
Zigsaw aims to be the magic box that understands company’s requirements, quantifies it, evaluates the available options and delivers the best results; all this on an auto-pilot mode: A total platform to endorse, evaluate, verify & select, all at your finger-tips.
A strong believer in using social media for recruitment, a practice that is increasingly finding favour with various companies, Vaibhav and his team have created various Facebook groups, each city specific to connect job and internship seekers with potential employers .The pages have a huge engagement and have landed many people their dream job /internship.
“Given that we have built this group from 200 members to 17k members in the last 4 months would give you an idea of the effort we have put in this group. It is a no-spam open group where recruiters can post their requirement and connect with Job seekers of their choice.”
With a variety of non- conventional methods Vaibhav aims to change the way recruitment industry works. Asked about his inspiration for starting up,he had this to say
“
I was preparing for CAT in my final year. All of scores in the preparatory tests predicted a percentile of 99% in the CAT exam. My exam went well but I scored only 83%. I studied closely the normalization methodology discussed on various online platforms. I also came to know that bell curve hypothesis are valid only for infinite data points & would lead to inconsistent results if done on a finite data segment. Even for my friends, the scores were a little unexpected(both ways). On the other hand, scores of my lobby mates for GRE & GMAT were consistent with their expectation. Although, some may argue otherwise, I think it is unfair to take the cream out based on easy/average questions. I think it is of utmost importance that we come up with a smarter algorithm to rate aspirants for every exam. If you are to select the top 1%, this can be only done with tougher questions that draw a clear distinction between the top 1% & the next 1%. We wanted to develop a smarter algorithm so that every smart guy is flagged & no brilliance goes unnoticed. I had 2 Jobs from campus but this idea was always in the backdrop. In September 2013, my friend Abhay asked me to make a bucket list. It was here, that this idea re-surfaced. There was no looking back since then. Abhay made me work on it. I definitely owe him big time for Zigsaw. From there, the idea has evolved from assessments to recruitment. “
According to him Zigsaw is different from other job portals and recruitment agencies as it
evaluates skills (self evaluation, peer evaluation & expert evaluation), creates a repository of pre-evaluated profiles which makes it easier for recruiters to use thus saving time & effort for partner companies .Also the system of referrals from existing user network make it easy for hiring the right person for right job.
On the experience of starting up
“It wasn’t easy. All the more for me because I was handling an independent HR role at the Tata's. I realised that It is difficult to convince people to experience a new way when they have been using the traditional methods of recruitment for years. We have been stopped at doors and shown out. Not listened to and been dismissed as bogus. But in the end we have always prevailed.”
Having catered to clients like pagalguy.com, razorpay and many other notable companies in the past Zigsaw surely looks set to be a major player in the recruitment sector in the coming years. Their Udaipur Job Festival and other job carnivals had companies like Uber,Indiamart ,Ziphop, Alien Tech Solutions, Spericon 3D, Rakhadu etc and their internship festivals has also met with great response from both companies and colleges.
On the challenges of being a startup founder,Vaibhav says”There are numerous challenges from getting right people to getting the product right but feedback from Job seekers has been our biggest strength and has been something that has helped us through times when business wasn’t good.”
Currently having a management team consisting of himself and Shristi Mahatma ,Vaibhav believes in hiring interns for getting work done.He has interns from top colleges likeIIT-Kanpur,BITS-Pilani,IIT-BHU, SVNIT,MNIT,VNIT & TAPMI. The rationale behind hiring interns Vaibhav says is
“They work brilliant. Create momentum & leave you with a lot of ideas. I have always preferred working with interns as they bring with the energy & ideas that is required for our business.”
With their ideas and boundless energy this startup from Udaipur has set out to achieve its vision of #RevolutionizingRecruitment”
