Profhire - Streamlining the hiring process for professors

Heyo, ProfHire is a web-based platform that connects colleges and universities and training organizations with vetted scholars and industry professionals for part-time faculty positions. I've been the chief human resources officer at 3 universities and found this to be one of my huge pain points and felt like I needed to solve this problem. So one of the big issues is that today more than 50% of faculty in colleges and universities are, are part-time, and that number is expected to rise to 65% by 2020 because of online training and some of the new training models, as well as the boot camps that are coming about. I tested this by talking with 200 academic administrators and asking them what some of their biggest issues were. 70% of them said that finding quality part-time faculty was one of their biggest issues. They also identified having a diverse faculty pool and ensuring regulatory compliance with the accreditors. Our solution is to help them find quality part-time faculty faster. And we do this with an online platform that's very easy to use. We have a diverse pool of candidates. We have right now 38% people of color identified and 51% women. We reduce risk by vetting the candidates. We verify all of their information, and we also do a brief interview with them. Today, universities are spending about $340 million on recruiting and onboarding alone for part-time faculty. That does not include any salary. As we saturate this market, we see ourselves expanding to the— larger higher education faculty and academic administrator market, and then on to additional HR tech industry. The platform is very easy to use. We get that comment constantly. The university puts in a request. They receive vetted candidates through our matching algorithm, and they're able to see not only the candidate, but they're able to download their information. They have a full portfolio of them. It also shows what we have verified for the candidate. We launched our product in February of this year and have placed so far 55 academics in higher education, and our numbers are growing every month. The pricing model is we have a tiered university pricing model based on the number of candidates that the university assumes they'll see in year, in 2017, we'll be moving to a freemium model for our applicants.

We—

our competition is primarily academic job boards, and that while they do have part-time faculty on those, they don't specialize in part-time faculty. None of them curate candidates like we do, and none of them vet. Our team is made up of myself, with years in higher education and human resources, Tak Ota, who is a database administrator and IT consultant to Higher Ed, and Jonathan Jiang, who we call a serial startup software engineer. He's been to a number of startups. Our ask, we're seeking $300,000 to bring our numbers to 45 additional university contracts and $350,000 in university revenue in 2017. Thank you so much.

So let's start getting questions and feedback, and maybe if you switch back to the camera there. I just want to note that I've been reading the chat and we have women from Tunisia, Abu Dhabi, really all over the world, London. It's beautiful to see such a such a wide range of people. So for the various esteemed investors and as well as listeners, what questions or comments do you have for Lisa?

How do you want to do this? I can jump in.

Yeah, please do.

Jill here. And this is actually fantastic because I actually serve on the board of governors for a large university here in Canada, so I know that this is a pain point. So really, really appreciate your presentation and definitely know the need is there. Could you just speak a little bit more about your pricing model? So you talked about the tiered pricing, and also just around confidentiality. How, as universities sign up for these— for these— sorry, these, you know—

Recruiting?

Recruiting! I need another coffee, sorry. I'll get going here. Yeah, how does that work as far as confidentiality, and how— and if you could speak a bit further to the pricing model.

Starting with the pricing model, what we do is we have— so one, if they're wanting to place only one person, it's $750. And then we have tiered based on the number that they're looking at that they feel that they'll be placing in a year. So for example, if they think they'll have 25, it's $15,000. And then in increments based on that $15,000 for 25, up to the point of 50 where they'd get another price break.

Okay, and do you guarantee any success around that? As far as— how does that work?

Once we share the candidates with them, then what we will do is if they— as long as, you know, within reason, as long as they are not able to find a candidate, we'll continue to look for them. The other thing we'll do is if we— if they really can't find a candidate, then we'll roll that over to another search.

Okay, great.

And the confidentiality question, sorry, I don't want to let that get overlooked.

Yeah, the key piece.

I wasn't sure if you meant confidentiality for the candidates or confidentiality for the school.

Well, both, because it is a two-sided marketplace that you're working on.

So with the school, we've had schools say, you know, that are using us now, and part of the contract is that we don't disclose who they are. We don't disclose the school to the candidate until we're right at the end so that we so that, you know, they don't contact them directly and they don't circumvent the system. In terms of the candidates, one of the things that they really like about it is the platform is private, so it's not like the job boards where they have all their information out, and only the school sees it and only the people that are at the school that are— the information shared with see it.

Okay, Chandani, did you have a Yeah, two questions. How are you planning on using the $300,000? And what are your best channels for your demand side acquisition right now? How are you getting more universities?

Right. So what we've done is we go to academic conferences. We go to— and we are partnering with academic organizations primarily. And then word of mouth is the third way, the— in terms of getting the customers. I forget what your first question was.

The $300,000.

Oh, the $300,000. Yes, we're definitely using that to bring more schools on board. So it'll be primarily marketing and sales.

So that goes back to my first question. How are you going to amplify the word of mouth using the $300,000? And how is the $300,000 going to help you reach out more academic organizations?

Yeah, one of the things— it's interesting. When we go into a school and talk to them and actually show them the product, We have had no one turn it down at this point. And they find the need, they feel they love the interface. What we really need is we need people to be able to do the sales for us and get out there and help us with the sales. So that's one of the major things. The other thing is being able to go to these conferences and talk and share what we have, as well as some advertising within the higher education community.

There's a couple questions online quickly, just to make sure our audience gets some voice. Kim was asking, are the candidates vetted? And then there's another question from Christine, and then we'll go back to the judges.

Yeah, definitely the candidates are vetted. That is, that's one of the secret sauces we have, is that we actually do vet the candidate, every candidate, before we put them forward to a university.

And Christine was asking, is this a— and a number of people in the chat— is this a path to full-time employment for these vetted candidates, or is this really something they want to be part-time forever?

We have, we have a mix of people. We have quite a few people who are industry experts and working in the industry, and they really want to be part-time faculty, and you know, they just want to teach a class or two per semester and that's it. But we also have some people who do want full-time positions, and that is identified in their profile that they're looking for something that's full-time.

Esteemed judges, any feedback or further questions?

I'll just make a quick comment. I thought it was a great presentation. I thought you hit all of the key elements, and it sounds like you have a great foundation. You've built some good traction. My question is, is $300,000 enough? To get you where you want to go and grow?

Well, certainly get us started. Yeah, we would then be looking for additional funding to work with the technology platform, build our base of employees. Okay.

I also have a quick comment. So it looks like it's a great market and you guys know how to convert them into a customer once you, you know, talk to them. So that's like the demo phase. I would recommend that you try some more scalable channels. So conferences, academic organizations, word of mouth doesn't seem like a tap that you can turn on and off at your will. So that would be the most important thing for you to do next is, first of all, it's most important for the founders, one of the founders, to take up the sales, not recruit somebody to do it at this stage. So for one of you to take that on and explore better scalable channels like inside sales, email, lead gen, and then, you know, doing a drip campaign, following up on that, getting on the phone with them. So you have— so you know, you know, you know what the conversion funnels, like how many calls it takes to convert somebody, how many leads it takes to get to a customer. So that would make the $300K very scalable. Mm-hmm.

Right. That's a pretty— and of course you do growth at 500 Startups among other things. So that's a key area. Not to put any pressure on you, but would someone like Lisa be applicable for the 500 Startups program? Because her raise is right in the zone. No, not just Lisa.

I would definitely invite everybody to apply. As long as you're willing to put yourself out there, right? So we always look for hustlers. So if Lisa is going to hire somebody to do her sales, then I would just say no right now. But if she's willing to put herself out there, willing to, you know, explore these scalable channels herself and do the work that it takes to get her customers—

I'm the one doing it now.