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Quess Corp’s talent platform—foundit(formerly Monster APAC & ME)—has unveiled its next-generation recruitment solution to revamp the hiring process with a future-focused approach.

The launch signifies a pivotal step in the company’s vision to connect the right talent with the right opportunities through tech innovations, including artificial intelligence (AI), said the company in a statement. It comes a year after job search portal Monster transformed into foundit, offering comprehensive solutions to recruiters and personalised and contextual services to job seekers.

“Since rebranding last year, we have been committed to going beyond merely solving problems to anticipating and building for the future,” Sekhar Garisa, CEO of foundit, said.

“Recruiters today are grappling with multiple challenges—navigating numerous sourcing platforms, sifting through irrelevant search results and inefficiencies in communication and closing positions. At foundit, the four pillars of our latest tech innovation address these challenges head on,” Garisa explained.

The foundit chief added that, with a next-gen approach, recruiters can have a comprehensive solution for increased agility and efficiency.

Revamping recruitment

foundit’s revamped hiring platform comes with an extended talent pool that includes both active job seekers and passive candidates. Furthermore, it features super profiles, offering information beyond traditional resumes, along with system-generated smart insights, the statement said.

The platform provides AI-powered search capabilities personalised by organisations, incorporating over 35 filters. It also includes an outreach module with AI-generated emails and mass personalisation, alongside a collaboration tool.

Over the past year, the primary focus has been on building the team and advancing AI, according to Anurag Sinha, Chief Product and Technology Officer of foundit. Within its in-house team, the company has data scientists and machine learning professionals.

foundit’s AI-powered approach is a departure from traditional recruitment practices, eliminating the need for candidates to disclose all information, as its system generates insights, including details like job market activity, using regression techniques and data science, Sinha explained. These smart insights classify candidates based on factors such as job offers, market activity, inclination to explore, and their experiences.

Moreover, foundit has embraced the current trend of generative AI, incorporating ChatGPT, in various intelligent contexts, including leveraging it to generate job descriptions and draft emails that maximise response rates, acknowledging the current preferences in the recruitment landscape, said Sinha.

In September, foundit initiated a private preview involving around 35 companies familiar with the product’s new functionalities. A month later, it introduced a public preview programme with around 100 enterprises, collaborating closely with their teams to gather feedback on features resonating with recruiters.

foundit claims that the 100 companies have seen an 80% increase in recruiter productivity, a 4.5X reduction in recruitment costs, and a 2X enhancement in candidate response rates.

Over the next few months, foundit will focus on transitioning its 7,000 existing customers from the older platform while concurrently onboarding new customers. Beginning mid-December, the next-gen product will be made available to new customers, Garisa said. By the end of January, foundit expects to complete the migration of all existing customers to the new platform, making it the sole operating platform.

Investment and returns

In 2021, the company secured Rs 137.5 crore in a funding round aimed at bolstering its product-led initiatives and facilitating market expansion. The funding was led by investors Akash Bhanshali of Volrado Venture Partners and Mohandas Pai of Meridian Investments, with participation from Quess Corp.

foundit has invested about Rs 25 crore in developing this next-gen recruitment solution, according to Garisa.

Speaking about a shift in pricing strategy for the next-gen solution, Garisa noted that the platform is moving from a traditional method of pricing, which is based on access to a specific number of profiles, to embrace a more flexible “consumption-based” pricing model.

The foundit chief elaborated that the platform’s goal is to enhance the recruitment chain by offering value beyond mere database access, The focus, he said, is on delivering benefits that extend beyond the number of profiles, emphasising quality and the potential likelihood of a candidate joining an organisation.

“As we are not a dominant player, we plan to strategically implement pricing interventions in incremental steps. Looking ahead to next year’s growth, we anticipate that 20% to 30% of it will be driven by these pricing strategies,” Garisa remarked.

He mentioned that foundit’s existing prices are competitive, affording it the flexibility to implement certain pricing interventions while remaining significantly more reasonably priced than dominant competitors.

Given the blend of features, including the integration of active and passive hiring, there’s no direct comparison for this product in India, according to Garisa, making it unlikely to find an immediate equivalent with all the functionalities that foundit is incorporating.

“Think of us as the best of Naukri and LinkedIn, combined with a bunch of new-age, data-driven recruitment startups out in the West,” he added.

foundit’s launch comes at a time when HR functions are increasingly adopting technology-centric tools for talent acquisition to enhance and streamline their hiring processes.