Published: Sunday, November 30, 2008
Web site uniting employers, potential workers for free
By MICHAEL CLEVELAND, Correspondent
NASHUA – Imagine finding what appears to be the perfect job. Or, imagine finding a person who appears to be the perfect job candidate.
But 1,000 miles separate the job and the person, and neither the company nor the applicant wants to put up the money for plane fare.
Once upon a time, everyone lost in that scenario – a great employee was lost and a great job went by the boards.
Tanya Willette and Eric Schifone believe they’ve found a way to make sure that never happens again. And it’s free.
The two – Willette, 23, of New Ipswich, and Schifone, 28, of Nashua – have started a company called Inovahire that will bring even the most distant potential employers and job-seekers together on the Web.
The site is not fully up and running yet, but some information is available at www.inovahire.com, and they expect to be fully operational in early December, at which point, companies and job-seekers just need to hit the “sign up” button to get started.
According to Willette, their online company takes the best of job boards like monster.com and brings it to office and home computers.
“We are offering them a 100 percent free job board that allows employers the chance to interview job seekers live online via a Webcam,” Willette said.
And, of course, vice versa.
But free?
Yes, for the most part. Each end of this equation – the employer and the potential employee – needs to have a computer with a Webcam, but Willette said that most new computers have them, anyway. Those that don’t . . . well, Inovahire has partnered with companies that offer Web cams and can make them available for less than $20.
“So, you’re having a conversation online,” Willette said.
This way, she said, a company in Nashua can interview a job applicant who is in California, for instance, or 10 applicants from around the country, to determine if it makes sense for both parties to get together.
“You can prequalify multiple candidates,” she said. “To bring everyone in for an interview takes a lot of time and money, but you can hop online for our free interview.”
And, she said, you don’t have to be a computer programmer to make the system work.
“Our technology will recognize the Webcam you’re using and pretty much the pictures (of the employee and employer) pop up and you start,” Willette said.
She and Schifone believe they and their investors – friends and family who, with them, put up about $100,000 for start-up costs – will make money allowing employers to increase the exposure of their job postings for a fee, and participating in revenue sharing programs for products offered under the site’s resource section.
They will also accept advertising from other firms – car dealers, supermarkets, anything, really – on the site.
“It could be absolutely anything,” she said.
An employer paying the $25 would find their ad popping up at the top of particular search fields.
For Schifone, whose background is in technical recruiting, and Willette, who has a
background in business consulting, the idea is to make sure more people and companies can be involved in the hiring process.
“When we looked at competitors,” she said, “the thing that bothered us was the cost.
“Candidates can only apply to those companies that can afford those (other online) services. That cuts out some companies and some opportunities.”
Offering the service for free cuts out no one, she believes.
“We’re very proud of this,” Willette said. “A lot of people are going to be helped by this Web site, and that was our main goal.”

Keywords:

job, jobs, search, free, interview, postings, webcam, employers, workers