With an average audience of more than 1.5m viewers in the last season, there’s no doubt that an appearance on the French TV channel M6’s “Qui veut être mon associé” (similar to “Shark Tank”) would speed up their development. Manon Chiche and Jonathan Carpi secretly dream of it. Their application is in the hands of the producers of the hit programme, with whom they are in contact.
In the meantime, the two entrepreneurs from Metz are patiently and humbly embarking on the MatchJob adventure, which came to fruition at the start of the year. After an initial observation period of a few months in France, the recruitment application became available in Luxembourg this autumn.
As soon as it hit the app stores, MatchJob was heralded as the Tinder of recruitment. And it’s true that the app bears many similarities to the dating app, both visually and in the way it’s used. Employers or job applicants are invited to swipe. When there’s a match, it’s possible to get in touch, with MatchJob providing the first with the second’s contact details. It’s simple and intuitive.
100% video
What makes MatchJob different from Tinder, however, is the systematic use of video. MatchJob has been designed to do away with the endless paper CVs and cover letters that many people don’t bother to read--especially now that AI has taken over. Instead, candidates have 30 seconds to show their best side and reveal some of their soft skills on camera. “Thirty seconds is the average time it takes to read a CV,” says co-founder Chiche.
Employers can use up to a minute of footage to present the position for which they are hiring, or the company, how it works, the facilities, the location... There’s room for creativity.
“It saves time,” says Chiche, who drew on her HR experience with the Bofrost frozen food group to develop the tool, which was designed by Ukrainian developers who had lived in the grand duchy. The videos are validated beforehand. “Our aim is to create professional moments of ‘love at first sight,’” says the young director.
Total cost of the investment: around €80,000, including €30,000 from the Grand Est regional council as part of a business creation grant awarded following a call for entries.
“Raising the bar”
Chiche, the COO, is currently working full-time to get MatchJob into orbit. Carpi, her partner and CEO of the startup, which is supported by The Pool incubator in Metz, has a parallel career as a project manager in the banking sector in Luxembourg. There, the couple have been meeting up on the ground, notably with Adem, to raise awareness of MatchJob and forge potential partnerships.
To date, the app has been downloaded 1,500 times and has a database of 400 candidates. Its creators are counting on a critical mass of 10,000 users and have given themselves several years to reach this target. “We need both: candidates and companies. And the hardest thing is to get both up and running at the same time.”
MatchJob is currently available in French and English, while an Italian version is under consideration. The first edition of Nexus2050, the tech event organised at the end of June by Maison Moderne and The Dots at Luxexpo The Box, was a good opportunity to forge closer links.
Free/paid system
MatchJob’s approach focuses primarily on “jobs in short supply,” according to its creators, in the catering and service sectors for example. It is aimed as much at the self-employed as at larger organisations, which by definition are major consumers of recruitment. On the French side, this is the case for the Subway fast-food chain and the Walygator theme park, which employ dozens of seasonal workers every year. They have already tried out MatchJob.
Two options are offered to job applicants, who can enter the nature of the job they want and the maximum distance they are prepared to travel, among other things, on their registration form. If they opt for an open profile, their video CV will be accessible to all users of the app. The other option is to choose a “closed” profile, visible to a potential employer only if the registered user has liked the ad posted.
Like Tinder, MatchJob operates on a free/paid system. In other words, “it's 100% free for candidates” submitting a video CV, and it costs €49 per advert for employers looking to hire one or more employees. “For this amount, the recruitment can concern one, two or ten positions,” explains Chiche. Subscription formulas could be developed in the future.
This article was originally published in .
