EHL Success Stories: Start-Up Edition is a new series to show support to our EHL Family and, more specifically, our hard-working AEHL entrepreneurs. This project aims to showcase EHL's entrepreneur mindsets, support new and upcoming ideas and businesses. While overcoming a challenging time for all companies, these Start Ups prove that resilience and hard work can overcome any problem.
For this feature, we present TieTalent. They are a company who believes in changing the game in the staffing industry by making recruitment simple for IT and Digital Marketing talents. They seek to make things easier, efficient and fun.
We had the chance to speak to them about their brand, motivations and challenging times.
Can you present yourself in a couple of words?
My name is Jovana Rotula, born in Belgrade, Serbia but grew up around South America - Columbia, Venezuela and Peru. My name is Marc Trillou, born in Lyon, France. We both studied at EHL, Jovana graduated in 2016 and Marc in 2014.
Can you tell us about TieTalent?
At TieTalent we believe that recruitment should be simple, fast and done on an equal basis. If you ask candidates looking for a job about their experiences with current processes they would tell you that they spend hours filling hundreds of repetitive forms to apply to jobs. They would tell you that they never receive any feedback and that all their effort and energy is spent for nothing most of the time. On the other hand, it’s hard for companies to find good talents. They receive lots of applications that don’t match and pre-selecting candidates takes a lot of time, while delegating this task to agencies is expensive. That’s why we created TieTalent.
We are a 2-sided tech jobs marketplace giving the power to the very best talents. At TieTalent, candidates no longer apply to jobs nor create motivational letters. These are the companies that apply for them for the jobs they want! Our intelligent platform allows companies to get instant access to rare talents they need to grow their business, while saving time and money on their recruitment. TieTalent is today trusted by thousands of candidates and hundreds of companies in Switzerland, including L’Oréal, Alpiq, or the Swatch Group.
Can you tell us the story of how it all started?
I (Marc) used to work in a recruitment startup, then a recruitment corporation, and I realized that the current recruitment market was having a hard time adapting to our fast changing world. Most of the current processes used by companies today are time taking and becoming obsolete. On my side (Jovana), after graduating from EHL, I realized that job seekers today had to spend tremendous time applying to jobs and creating motivational letters for negligible results as most of the time they never receive any feedback. Starting a new job changes one’s life. Hiring the wrong employee can bring a company to bankruptcy. We then asked ourselves how could technology and human expertise mix in order to provide a great and efficient hiring experience. We saw a missing opportunity in the market and came up with a simple idea: a two-sided tech jobs marketplace giving the power to the very best
How long has TieTalent been around?
The adventure started in February 2017 in a small room in Marc’s family’s apartment. Since then TieTalent gained the trust of thousands of tech talents as well as hundreds of companies in Switzerland and Germany including some of the most prestigious corporations in the world.
How did EHL play a role in developing TieTalent?
There is something unique about this school. For 4 years we were surrounded by talented individuals from all over the world. The fact that we have group projects on many different subjects and, at the end of the day need to come up with pragmatical solutions on problems arising through these assignments gave us skills we need in entrepreneurship. There is also a strong focus on the “savoir vivre” and “savoir être”, that are so important in (almost) whatever industry you are working in. EHL gave us the ambition, the international perception and the attitude to fight for our goals.
How did TieTalent experience the pandemic?
Last year, with the emerging COVID-19 crisis, we have seen an increase in demand for our services. Studies show that COVID-19 accelerated the digitalization of our economy by 2 years , and we see on a daily basis new tech-related projects getting developed across many sectors.
What was your biggest challenge faced during the past few months?
We want to become Western Europe’s #1 tech jobs' marketplace in the coming 4 years. To do so, we are currently building an international group with offices in Switzerland, Spain and Germany. Our biggest challenges in the last months were administrative: with the mandatory quarantines it was complicated for us to physically go abroad in order to create the structures, find the offices, integrate and train the teams.
What advice would've you given your 2019 self?
We cannot emphasize enough the importance of making all company and employee objectives measurable so that the expectations are clear and everyone is able to evaluate how we are performing. We would have also advised ourselves to invest in Zoom stocks (laugh).
What is your favorite quote?
If there was one quote that defines our spirit and motivate us to go forward on a daily basis, it would be this one:
Be on a constant quest to try to be better today than you were yesterday.
