Kenya’s Shortlist is Matching Job-Seekers with Amazing Career Opportunities
Considering the fact that finding the right, highly-skilled talent is particularly difficult in emerging markets, with an intent to combat this issue, Paul Breloff founded Shortlist, a recruitment platform in 2016.
The platform works majorly in India and East Africa to help growing enterprises hire based on skills and potential. They share the best career tips and latest job opportunities across Africa.
The Shortlist platform screens candidates using predictive chat-based interviews and online competency-based assessments, letting employers skip the most time-consuming and bias-prone phases of hiring.
CEO Paul Breloff illustrates why Shortlist stands apart; compared to, say, a company that relies on algorithmic recruitment services only.
He considers the approach of scraping keyword data from LinkedIn to using natural language processing (NLP) when filtering out job applications a method that misses human potential, and puts the youth entering emerging markets at a disadvantage.
Since its founding in 2016, with offices based in Nairobi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, including services throughout Kenya and India, human resources startup Shortlist has screened over 400,000 candidates for more than 300 clients like Uber Eats, Shell and Twiga Foods.
Earlier this year, the company closed a $2 million Series A raise and Shortlist’s Managing Director and 30 Under 30 honoree Ariane Fisher explains what’s next for the HR tech business. “With our funding, we plan to expand our reach and relationships with top job seekers and improve how we match those job seekers with amazing career opportunities, as well as continue our geographic expansion across Africa.”
“We’re excited to continue exploring different applications of our product across the broader African continent, where we see so much need for new and better ways to understand the skills, attitudes, and motivations of job seekers and new and better ways for employers to make hiring decisions,” Fisher says.
Comparatively speaking, what Shortlist is doing within recruitment isn’t too divergent from U.S.-based HR systems. But what they sell that larger companies like ZipRecruiter don’t is a personalized “human” experience.
That and the fact that digital HR is still a developing market in places like Kenya and within Eastern Africa, Shortlist is building a brand that is intended to appeal to both early-stage startups and large corporate entities in predominantly untapped areas.
In the past, Shortlist has been backed by Shell Foundation, AHL Venture Partners and University Ventures. It was also named to the London Stock Exchange Group’s ‘Companies to Inspire Africa’ 2019 report. The growing team of 65 plans to continue to expand within Eastern Africa in 2019.
