Revolutionary technology that effortlessly matches quality candidates to hospitality venues.
Business overview
Location | London, United Kingdom |
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Social media | |
Website | placed-app.com |
Sectors | Recruitment & Procurement Digital Mixed B2B/B2C |
Company number | 9878379 |
Incorporation date | 18 Nov 2015 |
Idea
Introduction
Created by the industry, for the industry, Placed is a revolutionary mobile and web app launched in July 2016. With our advanced algorithm and filtering system, we allow hospitality venues and candidates to automatically match with each other based on various criteria.
The Placed mission strives to solve the largest challenge faced by every hospitality venue; that being the ongoing difficulty of finding permanent staff in a time and cost efficient manner. We are also wholly dedicated to offering a more fun, interactive & easy way for candidates to access excellent jobs.
Our vision is to successfully disrupt the current recruitment process and exorbitant fee structures for placing junior to mid-level hospitality positions, becoming the leader in tech-based recruitment solutions in this sector.
Since launched, we have achieved great accomplishments and now our team, our technology, our existing foundations and our partner venues are extremely ready for Placed to go to the next level.
Please note that whilst the campaign is labelled as EIS eligible, the company has the majority of its SEIS allowance remaining. We will therefore be looking to seek SEIS relief on the first £110,945 invested into the campaign and EIS relief on the balance. Any tax relief is dependent on personal circumstances and may be subject to change in the future.
Intended impact
The turnover of hospitality staff in junior to mid-level positions is staggeringly high, meaning venues are constantly recruiting new staff but with current methods being either expensive, ineffective or both. Our research shows that there are no online platforms that offer immediate matching of candidates to venues; the process is entirely manual. Sorting through hundreds of CV's is a hugely laborious task with many being outdated, poorly written and with no uniformed formatting. Using agencies to find staff is far too costly considering the position and churn of the employees in question.
Placed aims to solve this issue and relieve these pain points by using advanced technology to immediately match suitable candidates to venues in one centralised, easy-to-use platform inclusive of interview scheduling, direct messaging, rating systems and short lists. We have removed CV's by ensuring candidates create profiles including previous positions held as well as personality information, education and a profile picture.
Substantial accomplishments to date
With a very small amount of external funding, we have achieved the following:
• Built, tested and launched a fully functioning iOS and web App with a two-way matching algorithm and exceptional UX.
• Beta build on Android app launching in a few weeks.
• Proven concept and attracted 131 of London’s top and most exclusive venues to the platform (within less than 8 weeks from having launched).
• Currently have more venues signed up to Placed than one of our closest competitors who have been live for 1+ years.
• Created great brand awareness through word of mouth and have put Placed on the map as one of the newest and best go-to tools for recruitment in hospitality (the founders have already been included in Marie Claire UK as pioneering females in their field).
• Appealed to influential industry leaders who are committed to investment and support.
• Attracted hundreds of job seekers just through organic means such as word of mouth, social media and email marketing with zero funding dedicated to advertisement and paid marketing.
Monetisation strategy
To commence with, our primary revenue stream will come from the following two options:
• Monthly retainer packages which include unlimited access to the platform, job posts and placements and will be dependent on size of venue and number of staff.
• A one-off fee per individual job post and/or job post bundles.
Future revenue streams include:
• Premium service for executive and director level positions.
• Add-on services.
• License the brand to other territories (Australia is already in discussion).
• Advertisement and Sponsorship.
Use of proceeds
Having already proven the concept and signed up 131 venues, we now require funding to attract quality, eager jobseekers in creative and innovative ways. We also need to continuously improve our product and service in order to prepare for national and international scaling of the business. The proceeds from our Seedrs campaign will be used on:
• User acquisition: Marketing; digital and online, PR and brand awareness, advertisement and SEO.
• Tech Development: new features and improving existing ones.
• Back office and additional team members to grow the company accordingly.
Market
Target market
Our target market falls into two categories; candidates and venues, with the goal of easing the process of finding work and hiring staff, simultaneously.
Candidates:
• Aged 18 to 40
• Passionate hospitality workers
• Those seeking quality roles at quality venues
• New to the city and with limited knowledge of how to go about finding a job in London
• Students
• Hospitality school leavers
• Apprentices
• Millenials
Venues:
• Medium to large venues and groups (restaurants, cafe's, bars, pubs, nightclubs, hotels) in London to commence with
• Growing businesses and new openings
• Venues challenged by staff retention
Characteristics of target market
The UK restaurant market is a leading economy to emerge from the recession and has an estimated valuation of £53b in 2017. With multiple restaurant and bar openings on a weekly basis, staffing has never been as competitive and hospitality recruitment is very much at the forefront or needs for venue owners and managers.
The hospitality industry is also the 4th largest employing industry in the UK and the largest for people under 25 years old. With over 900,000 job applications made each quarter through the UK's largest hospitality job board sites, the market we are entering is definitely large and in need of a major shift.
The current methods of recruiting is to either use an online job board, a recruiter or to rely on word of mouth. Using a job board is the cheaper option but requires a hefty amount of time. Job boards provide a large number of CV’s that need to be manually sifted through after which the candidates will need to to be contacted via another platform. Using a headhunter or recruiter is for many business an unaffordable way to recruit junior to mid-level staff. These agencies usually take a minimum of 10% of an annual salary and since the churn of these positions is so high, commission-based fee's are totally illogical.
Venues that staff around 80 people will have about 4 to 5 new joiners a month, spend on average 10K a year on on recruitment, spend on average around 3 hours a day on recruitment and hold up to 8 interviews a week.
Marketing strategy
We have a strong network of contacts in the industry and because we found that venues are so eager to test alternative recruitment methods, our marketing strategies are geared more towards candidate acquisition. We believe firmly in having a strong brand identity and want to make looking for a job fun and easy whilst promoting hospitality as a respectable and "cool" industry to be a part of. In terms of the way we market Placed, we are first and foremost a technology-driven recruitment platform that not only provides easy access to hospitality jobs but easy access to the best ones at London's most prestigious and trendy venues whilst also accessing a world of industry news and benefits.
News, benefits & perks:
This is a great conversion incentive as well as the opportunity to offer our partner restaurants further marketing and exposure.
Online and affiliate marketing:
Having such a specific target market allows us to effectively target and convert users in an online space.
Email marketing and newsletters:
Our weekly newsletters are bright, informative and incentivise readers to download the app by showing latest vacancies at great venues as well as the perks of the week.
Presence at Universities and trade shows:
Having a presence at university open days creates further awareness to an audience of potential candidates looking for part-time work. We have already exhibited at industry event Imbibe Live which was a huge success and created great exposure to candidates, venues and industry influencers
Open days and industry events:
We’re planning on organising interactive and fun industry events and open days independently and with our partners, in order to attract more new candidates
Social media, PR and advertising:
We already have a strong social media presence and will also use PR and advertising to increase brand awareness and generate hype about Placed and its partner venues.
Competition strategy
Thanks to extensive advertising on the underground, no-one could possibly have overlooked that mobile recruitment is a hot topic at the moment. A number of applications have come to market that are designed to ease the job search process which is a positive feat as there is a noticeable shift in behaviour as to the way people look for work and find staff. Placed is however, a recruitment app that focuses solely on permanent positions within the hospitality sector. Having built Placed alongside the wants and needs of the industry, we know that the vast majority of venues desire to employ, train and retain quality candidates, meaning that our approach to the problem is in line with the requirements of the industry.
Unlike our competitors, we are not a job board simply providing access to CV's to be eventually be sifted through, rather we provide an effective matching system and a centralised process that eliminates hours and hours of manual labour.
Through our years of experience in and understanding of the industry, including it's high turnover of staff and costly recruitment fees, we know that our customers are in desperate need of a time and cost effective mode of recruitment which is something we have held in the highest consideration whilst building this business. In our view our direct competitors do not have the industry specific skill-set and network that the Placed team does, allowing us to create a platform that truly addresses the pain points of this sector.
We offer our clients highly competitive fees that sit slightly below most current offerings. We're changing the behaviour of existing recruitment methods through our centralised, automated, technology-driven service that save our customers time and money. Placed is here to change the way venues recruit and the way candidates look for jobs. Feedback has already dictated that our market is open to new methods and Placed is offering something better, effective, modern, innovative and of course, cheaper!
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