Comparing candidates in WizeHire’s dashboard.
“For our customers, the pandemic has further shed light on a need for recruiting and hiring technology,” Upadhyay told TechCrunch via email. “As an SMB-focused hiring platform — and one that was bootstrapped at the time — the early months of the pandemic were tough … [But we] expanded our services beyond hiring, including new products such as access to Paycheck Protection Program loans or small business tax credits directly within our app … [and] expanded our footprint into new industries such as mortgage and insurance.”
WizeHire was founded in 2014 by Upadhyay and Jay Niblick. Upadhyay previously cofounded Hoot.me, an app designed to let college students to add classes and collaborate with teachers and classmates on Facebook. Civitas Learning acquired Hoot.me in 2013.
“Smaller businesses need to focus on growth — not keeping up on HR trends, industry statistics, or job board best practices. WizeHire does the heavy lifting to support them in finding the right talent for their business to grow,” Upadhyay said.
Upadhyay didn’t directly respond to a question about algorithmic bias, but he pointed out that WizeHire also provides advice from hiring and business coaches.
Beyond AI-driven suggestions, WizeHire advises clients on the difficulty of a hire in their local market based on an analysis of internal hiring data and “proprietary third-party data.” Elsewhere, WizeHire recently launched a partnership with LinkedIn to simplify the application experience on mobile devices and collaborated with Payscale, which advises small businesses on pay, to power compensation insights within the company’s platform.
Looking ahead, WizeHire plans to add background checking and candidate-to-recruiter text messaging features plus “lawyer-approved” offer letter templates for particular industries.
Image Credits: WizeHire
“Staffing firms are expensive, applicant tracking systems are built for HR experts, and job boards are time-consuming to manage for a busy business owner. Hiring challenges on Main Street are so prominent that everyday customer’s are impacted,” Upadhyay added. “Many HR tech companies tend to focus on helping enterprise companies with unlimited resources at their fingertips. WizeHire not only focuses on Main Street businesses who are underserved, but building them a unique experience for each industry vertical.”
