Caitlin MacGregor is convinced the recruiting profession has its priorities backward, and she and her colleagues at Plum Inc. are determined to put them right.
Plum is a Waterloo-based startup that helps companies or other employers find the right employees based on their character rather than skill set or history. That is important because research published recently in Forbes magazine has shown that half of new employees only last in their jobs for 18 months. In almost nine cases out of 10, the reason for failure is an attitudinal problem.
And yet, to MacGregor’s amazement, most hiring executives select candidates based on their resumés or superficial factors.
“They’re looking at the wrong things,” she said in an interview on Friday. “It’s keywords or what school they went to. Whether someone went to Conestoga College or someone went to Harvard – that’s not something predictive to say how they’re going to do in your company.”
Plum’s software-as-a-service technology helps organizations – usually companies with 100 to 5,000 employees – find the individuals that fit that particular group’s culture. MacGregor said it does so by applying the same quality of psychological testing that Fortune 500 companies use to choose CEOs.
When a company using Plum wants to hire someone, the hiring executive spends about five minutes taking a test to outline the qualities the company is looking for in a candidate. The idea is to identify the company’s culture and the personality traits needed for the specific post. Then each candidate for the position takes a 25-minute test, which assesses his or her attitude, cognitive abilities and personality.
Plum then goes through the applicants for each posting and matches the company’s requirements with the individuals that most closely align with those requirements. The hiring executive can examine the leading candidates, and then consider such things as skill sets, background and education.
“Plum allows the employers to know who their candidates really are, rather than who they claim to be,” said MacGregor.
The genesis of Plum dates back to when MacGregor was tasked with opening a U.S. office for a former employer. She had to hire staff and was told that making the wrong choice for the first hire would cost the company $300,000. She gave the candidates psychometric assessments, and one of the top scores came from a woman called Christine Bird, a fine arts grad who worked as a waitress. In other words, she didn’t have the background expected for the position.
Another candidate won the position (he was later fired), but MacGregor found a position for Bird, who excelled as an employee. In fact, she’s a Co-Founder of Plum, where she’s now Vice-President of Sales and Partners.
Plum, a graduate of the former Communitech accelerator Hyperdrive, received a $150,000 convertible note from BDC Capital and other funding in the past. It has completed half its seed round, though MacGregor decline to reveal specifics of the round.
The company now has more than 65 active customers and the platform has been used on every continent other than Asia. More than 40,000 job seekers have used the system.
MacGregor said she has received great feedback from companies that use Plum, but job-seekers also like the product.
“Jobseekers are so hungry to be judged for what they are,” she said, “and they are sick and tired of being rated based on a keyword.”
Eye on KW is a regular feature in Entrevestor that highlights startups and the innovation ecosystem in Kitchener-Waterloo.
