This Malaysian startup is disrupting recruitment and hiring

ASK any recruiter and they’ll tell you that job matching isn’t a simple, foolproof process, whether for the prospective employee or the employer.

And as if the process of attracting candidates of the right caliber isn’t tough enough, there’s also the danger of hiring one who interviews well but who isn’t the right cultural fit for the organization.

But what if there’s a tool that allows you to immerse yourself in a workplace even before accepting the job offer?

Not only would it ensure you’re entering a company that’s right for you, but employers could quickly hire staff who fit nicely into their existing team.

For any organization small or large, that’s a much-needed time-saver. For today’s job seekers, its means getting a foot in the door that leads to their dream career.

The WOBB way

Malaysian job search platform WOBB has made this a reality. WOBB, which stands for “working on bean bags”, was founded in 2014 by entrepreneur Derek Toh, who quit his corporate job just two weeks after dreaming up the idea.

It seems Toh was certain the venture would be a success, and he was right: WOBB’s website and mobile app were launched in 2015 and gained traction pretty quickly, going from 3,000 job seekers to 60,000 job seekers in August 2017.

The firm’s Marketing and Product Head Shakira Kavanagh credits the company’s success to Generation Y – also known as millennials – who the search platform was built for.

“There is no other job portal that focuses on transparency of company culture the way that WOBB does. And this is what the current generation of young professionals consider a priority in searching for a company to work for,” she said.

Their mission is to become Asia’s Number One job search platform, and by offering users a virtual tour of potential workplaces and corporate profiles, this aim seems feasible. WOBB also gives employers the chance to present themselves to the best and brightest talent in Malaysia.

For a relatively new company, WOBB has had many headline achievements. The company has earned CIP Catalyst Cradle Funds at a total of RM650,000, and has secured RM1.7 million from a crowdfunding operation, which lasted only three weeks.

As well as this, WOBB has signed a partnership with LinkedIn, acting as their official content partner, and has earned RM2 million in revenue since it started charging for its services in January 2016.

Doing it right with tech

Running such a successful company is difficult, however, and dependent on technology to keep operations smooth.

The site’s web application framework is written using Ruby on Rails, while also relying on cloud services provided by Amazon and Google, to store and deploy its code. Chief Technology Officer CK Leong elaborated on this:

“This allows us to quickly and efficiently collaborate on writing code and sharing ideas, adding in features and iterating improvements constantly.”

Several different cloud applications are harnessed by the team to monitor and maintain the website and mobile app, allowing errors and bugs to be detected quickly.

It is also vital that the needs of users are catered to, and so their behavior and usage patterns are tracked and analyzed using Google analytics.

“This allows us to track the effectiveness of our marketing and outreach campaigns. We also use email marketing to interact with our jobseekers and employers. Analysis of the data gathered by these tools will then be used to decide where and how to allocate our budget and resources to develop product features and services needed by users.”

For customer relationship management (CRM), Wobb’s sales team internally manages their clients using a software called Pipedrive. Answering live queries from employers on the site involves using Tawk.to, a free live-chat app, whilst Wobb’s marketing team uses a combination of Get Response and Mail Chimp for email marketing.

Leong says that efficient and effective internal communication is vital in streamlining Wobb’s business processes, and in reducing both internal and external miscommunication.

“For this, we use Google Apps (now called Gsuite) to work together on documents and data, we also use Facebook Workplace for internal discussion and coordination.”

Thanks to its operations and effective use of technology, Wobb continues to expand and grow its user base, with more job seekers and employers joining its community every single day. The site will most likely remain a firm favorite of young professionals who aren’t looking for just a job, but a place where their priorities and qualities align, says Shakira:

“It’s no longer just about the job description, after all, you can do the same job in multiple companies. It’s the company culture that makes a difference as to how fulfilled you are in your career.”

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