Founder Q&A
Today’s best candidates are harder to attract than ever, yet most companies never engage with the candidates they worked so hard to find. At Herefish, we believe that consistently nurturing candidates can change the relationship between recruiting teams and candidates.
Rather than expecting a staffing firm or HR department to become full-stack marketers, Herefish combines technology, strategy and execution into a single solution so our customers can stay focused on what they do best; hiring the best possible candidates.
You have spent a lot of time, money and effort building your candidate pool, we think you should get the most out of your investment.
Jason: Coming from the recruiting software world, we knew identifying, recruiting and retaining top talent has never been harder. Recruiters were spending their time, money and effort sourcing candidates over and over, rather than looking at their own database to create an engaged pool of talent.
Travis: From a marketer’s perspective, it was problem that could be solved by delivering relevant content and marketing automation – two functional areas recruiting teams usually aren’t staffed for.
Jason: Well, candidate nurturing isn’t necessarily a widely used term in the staffing and HR space, but it’s the best way to describe what we do. Basically we’re taking forgotten candidates in a client’s database and consistently engaging with them until they’re “warmed up” and consider our client’s jobs rather than a competing company. It’s a really competitive space, so any way to stick out in a candidate’s mind is a leg up.
Travis: Our ultimate goal is to deliver better hires, faster. Generally, we see non-job seeking candidates with open and click rates about double normal industry metrics. When a candidate is a job seeker we can seek open rates as high as 70% and click through rates as high as 27%. If you’ve spent any time email marketing then you know you typically see much, much lower engagement.
Jason: Well, we both come from the recruiting software space and have been serving and working in the industry for about 20 years combined. During that time we’ve built a really deep understanding of the speedbumps and roadblocks recruiting professionals face. We have literally spent hundreds of hours researching and discussing the challenges faced with recruiting high-quality and in-demand candidates. I think we’re both really strong in different ways and complement each other’s skillsets.
Travis: Yeah, we’ve always stayed involved in marketing and recruiting; I started a marketing agency that served technology brands and Jason ran technology for a large staffing brand. My expertise lies in digital marketing and I’ve helped software startups and Fortune 500 companies develop long-term strategies to continually feed the funnel. The funny thing is, a small startup, Fortune 500 and a recruiting organization have the same problems, just at a different scale.
Jason: So, after a bunch of conversations at Katies Osteria, it was clear we needed to bring our content marketing and technology expertise to recruiting. It’s a fairly unique skillset and hadn’t really been addressed prior to Herefish. Recruiting and staffing is a huge, but often overlooked industry and we knew we could help thousands of companies and provide a better overall experience for their candidates, thus, Herefish was born.
Founder
Jason’s got a knack for understanding customer problems and solving them with technology. Before Herefish, he was with the software company Sendouts, then on to industry-leading Bullhorn where he continued to build cool products. Outside of work, he likes being active, getting outside and spending time with his two sons.
Founder
Travis likes marketing, technology and a good taco shop. After working for Sendouts, with a brief stint in the Rockies, he started a small digital marketing agency that helps tech companies. He and Jason teamed up, created Herefish and the rest is history. When not in the office he’s usually found outdoors.
Director of Technology
Kevin hates wearing shoes, likes beer from weird glasses and can hack virtually anything together over a weekend. Prior to joining Herefish, Kevin worked for a health care startup, was a hired gun for contract staffing and code-wrangled for a leading structural framing software. He likes all things active and enjoys spending time with his wife, son and new puppy.