Highflyers

Idea

Introduction

In a nutshell
Highflyers is a digital platform where top financial services companies can access a highly curated, bi-weekly refreshed, pool of professionals actively looking for a career move, significantly reducing time and cost of hiring. The first segment is chartered accountants.
Instead of candidates applying for jobs, Highflyers candidates (only the top 10% that make it through our screening) are approached by employers. Managers in fact can potentially find their perfect candidates in seconds by using filters and keywords.

Intended impact

Problem
In the last 20 years, we have seen very little innovation in recruitment. Traditional agencies still dominate the market, with an old and labour intensive business model.

Companies feel the pain, even more in growing industries: in the next 10 years the FS industry will have 150k more jobs in London alone. We believe that:
• Recruitment agencies seem to be unable to select and pre-screen candidates effectively
• Both recruitment agencies and job boards provide hundreds of irrelevant CVs

But also FS professionals feel the pain, being bombarded by recruiters proposing jobs that do not match their skills and desires.
Furthermore many have to either choose pushy recruitment agencies or fill in lengthy job applications: not exactly the treatment highflyers would expect. If you are one of them, you already know this.

Solution
We
• Attract candidates, both the ones actively looking for a career move and the unfindable passive candidates
• Select only the crème de la crème according to criteria set by our clients
• Make their CVs fully searchable within our platform, adding relevant tags and filters
With many filters in place, managers can find the perfect candidates in seconds and invite them for interviews.

Objectives
By the end of 2016
• Place at least one professional per working day
• Have created employment for at least £9m combined salaries
By the end of 2018
• Place at least five professionals per working day
• Have created employment for at least £90m in combined salaries
By the end of 2025
• Become the leading platform for recruitment in financial services worldwide

Mission
• Empower FS professionals to take on the career path that they are inspired by and desire, by providing them access to the best companies in the market
• Enable the best companies to hire the talents they need timely and effectively, by giving them access to the finest pool of professionals looking for a career move

Substantial accomplishments to date

In only 120 working days, the team:
1) Published a website as a minimum viable product
2) Demonstrated to be able to attract candidates in the financial services industry
a. At scale: over 650 applications
b. Economically: at an acquisition cost below £6
c. Of high quality: 20% of recent applicants come from Big4 or FS Blue Chip companies
3) Agreed a 90-day trial period with two Big 4’s and one UK top 50 London based accountancy firm
4) Placed the first few candidates for an interview with a top notch company

Monetisation strategy

When a candidate is placed, the recruiting company pays Highflyers 15% of the annual salary of the candidate, and Highflyers pays a bonus to the candidate (around £2k, variable).
Roles taken on by Highflyers fall into the £40k-£150k range and an average of £50k is forecasted for prudence.
At such rates, transactions are expected to average approximately £7.5k or higher.

Costs
The current monthly cost-base of Highflyers is £11k for a total of 6 staff members and 1 office.
In the next few months, current salaries need to be adjusted and two experienced professionals (one with a digital marketing background and one with a financial services recruitment background) recruited.
Currently the average cost per application is below £6 and the average cost per highflyer (candidate accepted on the platform) below £40.

As typical for tech start-ups that aim at building a marketplace, all profits will be re-invested to expand the business geographically and across other verticals.

Growth
Highflyers is aiming for an increase of 1 placement per month per office/segment served.

Use of proceeds

Proceeds will be used to fund the various areas of the business: candidates’ generation, clients’ acquisition, operations, account management and technology.

Approximately, investments will be used as follows:
20-25% Account Management
30-35% Business Development
5-10% Customer service
15-20% Candidates' generation
10-15% Technology
5-10% Fixed costs