MoBerries is a recruitment platform distinguishing themselves by leveraging data to drive more human interaction. I sat down with the founder Mo Moubarak to partake in an all-encompassing talk centered around the product, his views on the labor market and their approach to recruitment and its role in promoting equal opportunity and why it is more important in today’s landscape.
Hi Mo, great talking to you. Let us dive right into it. For those who do not know: What is MoBerries?
What makes us unique is we have developed what we call a talent redistribution engine. Our time has seen a fundamental shift in how recruitment fits as module in terms of what we perceive as the talent acquisition stack. It is called a redistribution engine because it focuses on how active talent is moving through the broader market in real-time. The engine itself is based on a neural network approach to hiring, it learns from the interaction of candidates and hiring managers to learn and provide you a quality filter which can be applied to streamline sourcing and screening.
Ok, I get it. But what makes it different compared to other recruiting platforms?
The reality is we are in a new age of digital transformation, in our lifetime we will see technology continue to proliferate within almost industry and at the core of our mission is using these advancements to help in focusing on the human side of recruitment.
Whether it be new jobs which are opening up due to automation and ai, empowering people of different cultural or socio-economic backgrounds, providing transparency to talent acquisition teams with regards to owning their own data enabling them to be more data-driven and apply their budgets in impactful ways. These are all elements of topics modern recruitment is geared towards better addressing.
We build the engine, an entire product focused on benefiting candidates and users in the same way. It is an end-to-end orientated, self-learning software.
Why is this necessary?
To breakdown the matter without trying to fear monger is a perceived widening of the social gap. Though technology has made it easier to acquire and develop skills we want to ensure everyone has a chance at not just “getting a job” but developing themselves and subsequently their career in a way which is meaningful to them.
If you do not grow up under ideal circumstances or have the best support system, your chances are left at a disadvantage with regards to how recruitment works. We discuss this all time with regards to candidates do not need to learn how recruitment works but how they can make it best work for them. For us it is all about leveling the playing the field through the democratization of data, eliminating gaps with regards to candidates having data on how the market perceives them and what they can do to develop themselves.
On the other hand, companies are hungry to cut through the noise and find talent which can grow with them as the paradigm of “career” has and will continue to shift. The status quo will be challenged when it comes to established players not offering enough granularity in relation to what we call first mile recruiting, everything which happens before the introduction. In my opinion there is no “war for talent” when it comes to established brands they can afford and attract anyone; there problems are steeped in efficiency. How do we better spend are budgets attract the right people but also redistribute people in the marketplace to other firms who are not ready now, like youth or development teams in pro sports. You have stars in our starting lineup, but you own your own pools consisting of pipelines of the tomorrow rising stars.
We say Glassdoor is last mile insights after you have hired but we provide you context within the first mile. Everything you need to know about how the trends in recruitment are shifting, how candidates perceive your brand as well as measures you can take to find and engage them more efficiently. Just like shifts in financial services allowed people to trade stock with more transparency and confidence in real time we empower talent acquisition teams with insights which allow them to make decisions based on market analytics.
Therefore, you have developed this new feature to help you achieve equality of chances. How is it called and how does it work?
We spoke about the talent redistribution engine, think about the oil which powers this engine as data. Many companies will claim to do AI yet to accomplish this you need access to a lot of data. However, that is not enough, the data should be labeled and classified. That is what the system does.
If candidates do not accept a match, they will be asked to give a reason for rejecting it. The resulting feedback helps companies to discover areas for potential improvements. Candidates on the other hand see fields for optimization and know where to work on if they are being rejected. Analytics Insights gathers information to enable everybody in this ecosystem to make data-driven decision.
Sounds great in theory. How does this work in practice?
Let us use our partners as an example. Companies like SAP or Tipico get thousands of applications each year. But they only hire 2 to 5% of their candidate inflow. What happens to the rest? Unfortunately, it is common practice that candidates hardly get the exact reason for not being hire. They are left clueless.
On the other hand, while learning about candidates and their characteristics, companies save time on the most time intensive part of recruiting, sourcing, and screening. They can draw insights on what works and what can be optimized while identifying new opportunities in upskilling, retraining, or even tapping privately owned pools, reducing their reliance on other external platforms. Our date-driven analysis tells them comprehensively where they can find the talent they are looking for. The money they generate through our monetization allows them to reinvest in teaching up their personal as well as the best performing channels. No money is spent on unnecessary advertising.
It is all about transparency, in the early inception of our firm we were so focused on competing while we developed the technology out yet today, especially in the midst of a global pandemic firms are pushing to be more efficient are very cost conscious. The drive maximize on their brand within recruitment is there.
I also want to take a second to address headhunters and boutique recruitment firms. We do not see it as an us versus you, we understand they are specialized and are good at what the do, the aim of working today with over 200+ firms is we that we integrate them to understand what type of candidates they are specialized in to build an efficient bridge between them and companies who are looking for their talent. We highly believe that at the end of the day the talent you represent should do the talking and if you are putting people in the marketplace who are transacting and doing well you should be rewarded.
This reminds me of the movie Moneyball, where one sports manager changes the way the system works using analytics.
To be honest, the comparison to the sports world is not far off as I am an avid sports fan.
Why we aim to grow with the candidate. There are lots and lots of amazing young, talented, and motivated people who do not get a chance only because they do not fit what we see as times “archaic” requirements. Recruiters oftentimes decide based on looks, feelings, and standardized testing to determine a candidate’s quality. The reason being data-driven is so invaluable is you can build an understanding for who are the types of people who we need for which types of roles. This is what happens in sports all the time. People go undrafted and end up having great careers. Just look at Tom Brady.
But Tom Brady landed in New England, one of the best-run franchises in the league, with arguably the best coach ever. Is this comparison flawed?
No, I believe it is not. Obviously, the system and the surroundings matter. But not every candidate is ideal for every company. Tom Brady was willing to take pay cut year after year in a system not willing to pay players big money. The Patriots are trying to find the right personal for their team, the fit was ideal. Fit is everything but Tom Brady lands in a different culture who knows what he would have been. I also know from the data the impact big brands have on the development and earning power of candidates. A candidate who gets a big brand on their CV like amazon is better than any university courses. With regards to earning coming from a bigger brand candidate can earn up to 30% more on their next jobs, if you do not believe me look at all the people with Ex-Google, Ex-Tesla. Ex-Facebook in their CV.
We are focused on real people, not on traffic or just numbers. At the core of our mission is high tech should lead to high touch, technology should allow you to spend more time on human interaction being high tech with human interaction.
Great example! Lastly, let us address the elephant in the room: how big of an inspiration was Tinder?
People often draw this comparison. This made me a bit angry in the beginning since MoBerries is so much more than this. Today I can take this as a compliment as my framing of the situation has evolved. When it comes to simplicity, the ergonomic approach and the beauty of design, Tinder is awesome. They have removed all the barriers in getting to meet someone and establish a relationship, how you navigate and shape this relationship is up to the user. That is one of the reasons why people use it as much as they do. So, if MoBerries reminds its users of Tinder, they can see it as Tinder for jobs if they want to – as long as they use it and the value prop is easily perceived I am happy.
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