How Moncton’s VidCruiter Doubled Its Workforce During Covid
MONCTON — When VidCruiter CEO Sean Fahey thinks about how the past year and a half has been for his company, he describes it as a one-way roller coaster heading “all the way down,” meaning it’s been a thrill to see the company grow.
“VidCruiter grew about 100 percent in the last year, and we went from a company of 50 employees to a company of 100 employees,” said Fahey in an interview Friday.
VidCruiter is a software company that offers video recruitment and other online hiring solutions that make hiring large numbers of people easy and customizable. Last month, the company received $153,900 from Opportunities New Brunswick to create 20 new full-time jobs.
With that provincial funding, Fahey said they plan to hire more staff to handle sales, customer support, development and its implementation team, which helps new clients get on board with VidCruiter’s software.
Fahey said the Covid-19 pandemic has been a driving factor in VidCruiter’s recent growth. With more people turning to online software for everyday business, along with hiring, Vidcruiter saw a “dramatic uptake” in its products over the last 18 months.
“Before the pandemic, video interviewing was less common,” said Fahey. ”Whereas now, it’s not like a weird thing to do — it’s extremely common. So the sort of stigma of ‘I’m not sure, I’ve never used this before,’ disappeared because everyone’s been using video interviewing.”
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VidCruiter has made it manageable to do a lot of hiring in a short amount of time, Fahey said. The company offers two kinds of video interviews. One is similar to a Zoom call, which creates automatic bookings, text message reminders and rating guides.
The other, however, is more similar to Netflix.
“Candidates record themselves at home on their own time by themselves and a recruiter or hiring manager would watch that video afterwards,” said Fahey. “So, Friday night, you log into Netflix and watch movies, and on Monday morning, a recruiter logs in and watches interviews.”
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Fahey said both types of interviewing allows recruitment to dramatically speed up their hiring processes. The pre-recorded product is used to replace a typical phone interview or initial screening. Then, recruitment staff can choose who moves on to the next round of interviews.
“So, typically, you may be able to phone interview, you know, eight to 10 people, maybe at most 20,” said Fahey. “But, with our product … you can send 100 people to go record an interview [on Friday] and then Monday morning, you log in and all your interviews are done.”
Some of VidCruiter’s growth has involved businesses around the world, including the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe. In fact, the company just signed a contract to use their products in every Canadian consulate and embassy globally.
According to Fahey, he doesn’t see that growth stopping any time soon, based on his own projections.
“Those kinds of expansions for us are what we’re going to keep doing, said Fahey. “At the pace that we’re going, VidCruiter is probably going to double again in the next 12 to 18 months.”
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Aaron Sousa is a summer intern for Huddle. Send him story suggestions: [email protected].