smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Yale graduate Virginia Raemy launched online recruitment marketplace TalentPuzzle in July 2009 and aims to transform the industry for employers and agents.

What does the company do?

Talentpuzzle allows employers to set the fee they are willing to pay recruitment agencies when they make a hire. Employers can anonymously post jobs and select recruiters based on performance ratings, while the agencies know exactly what they can earn by providing the right candidates.

How do you make money?

We invoice the client for a fee once they employ someone and keep it for eight weeks so that we can guarantee an eight week full money-back guarantee should the candidate not work out. After the eight weeks, we give 75 per cent of the fee to the successful recruitment agency and we keep 25 per cent.

Where did you get the idea?

I previously worked for a hedge fund and we’d looked at hiring people. I didn’t know which agencies to go to or how much to pay. I came across this business model in the US that was working well there and after my hedge fund went bust in the recession I decided to give it a try in the UK.

How was it financed?

I used my own funding to get it off the ground. I developed a technical platform and hired a salesman to get the ball rolling. As soon as I had a working platform I went to angels and seed funds and managed to secure backing from two of each.

How have you marketed it?

We reach a big range of companies through online and email marketing and use our sales team to follow up on leads and speak to companies through one on one meetings.

Our biggest challenge is that we are offering a service that relies on changing the behaviour of people, so we have to educate companies which are looking to hire, especially small ones, that this option is out there.

There are currently no comments on this article