Moncton-based VidCruiter is plotting to expand its marketing department in the coming year as CEO Sean Fahey is determined to improve the company’s revenue growth.
In an interview at the company’s headquarters on Wednesday, Fahey admitted the profitable provider of video interview software had a slowdown in revenue growth in the fiscal year ended June 30.
Sales growth decelerated, he said, to 74 percent.
“Year-on-year sales growth was 74 percent and we’re not satisfied with the growth level that we’re getting,” said Fahey. “I want to see triple-digit growth. I know it’s still good compared with some other tech companies but we’re not happy with it.”
Fahey’s dissatisfaction with a growth rate other companies would kill for says something about how this nine-year-old company has grown into one of the world’s leading providers of video recruitment software.
VidCruiter started in 2009 by producing a tool that recruiters could use to conduct interviews online to streamline the hiring process. VidCruiter still has the original vision of a video interview system, but now combines it with an applicant-tracking system and other features that help to simplify workflow for recruiters. Fahey said the product’s strength is that its questions and evaluations are standardized and delivered digitally.
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The company’s target markets are the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia, and it sells to “everyone from Fortune 50 companies to mom and pop recruiting firms”, said Fahey. The VidCruiter website lists such clients as General Motors, KPMG and more recently the Canadian government.
About 18 months ago, the product was adopted by the federal Environment Department, which Fahey says has reduced its use of paper by 50,000 pages by using VidCruiter. The product is now used by 20 other federal departments, and the VidCruiter team is hoping to extend its reach within the government.
VidCruiter has grown mainly through online marketing, but Fahey now wants to develop a full marketing team. It will add at least five people to its 25-member Canadian staff in the coming year. (The company also has 15 employees overseas, in the Philippines, Panama and Algeria, to help with foreign languages, customer service and data entry. Those offices will also grow in the near future.)
The company certainly has room for growth. It occupies an entire floor of a Moncton office building and has enough spare space that the staff pays floor hockey in one vast vacant room. “We’re the only tech company in the world with an indoor hockey facility,” jokes Fahey during a tour of the office.
One other interesting facet of the company is it has accomplished this growth without raising much capital. Fahey said it took on some angel investment in its early days, but has never had any venture capital investment.
Fahey said he gets calls about once every three weeks from U.S. venture capital firms inquiring about whether VidCruiter is thinking about raising money. These are preliminary inquiries, he said, and simply show that VidCruiter is on these funds’ radar. For now, VidCruiter isn’t looking for capital.
“Right now, I don’t feel we’re in a position that it would accelerate our growth that much,” he said. “The timing’s not right yet – let’s leave it at that.”
For the next year, the focus is a full push in marketing, continuing to add functionality to the product and a return to triple-digit sales growth, said Fahey.
“The goal is growth.”