Recruitment is a process that any Hong Kong founder has griped about at one point or another. While the struggle to find the right person for your fledgling startup is certainly real, it might have to do with the untapped potential of the local talent pool.
We had a chat with Jean Yoo (pictured right in the top photo), the co-founder of LIBBLER: an Asia-focused career development platform that helps connect employers with young talent. Having met her co-founder Sue Kim at a UBS leadership development program back in 2009, the two women experienced firsthand their organization’s efforts to retain their top employees, but also witnessed the high turnover in the lower rung.
“Global employers invest a lot in recruiting young talent and end up in what’s called ‘the war for talent.’ Basically, they compete for the same small pool of high potential candidates and struggle to retain them,” said Jean. “We’ve seen firsthand a huge gap in this market, both how young people find opportunities and how companies engage them.”
Before launching their platform in December 2012, Jean and Sue spent the previous year doing their due diligence. Besides conducting extensive research, they also ran workshops and spoke to over 5,000 students and alumni to organically grow their talent database. “Our robust talent pool has helped us gain traction with employers, we want to get recognised as the go-to young talent acquisition channel,” said Jean. “They can access closely matched profiles anytime and the service is affordable so it can be used by small and medium-sized companies.”
LIBBLER has since grown their target community from over 65 countries and offers a highly curated experience on their platform, listing roles drawn from over 50 of their employer partnerships. Under the ‘Career Track’ section which recommends related roles and career advice based on keywords of the targeted discipline, users can get educated on the different career landscapes to figure out where they’re a good fit.
While mainly finance-focused at the moment, Jean said that LIBBLER’s next plan of attack is to start helping startups with their recruitment needs.
“This is an exciting time for the growing startup community in Hong Kong and we want to help with their talent needs. While there’s a lot of demand for technology skills, I also think that startups can massively benefit from high skilled, non-tech professionals,” said Jean. “Startups need good business developers, marketers, accountants, project managers and basically someone non-tech that can wear multiple hats.”
To chat more about hiring for startups, Sue will be running a workshop at Cyberport called ‘Staffing Your Startup’ today.
Register for the event here!
Jean Yoo on Startbase.HK: Jean Yoo
Sue Kim on Startbase.HK: Sue Kim
LIBBLER on Startbase.HK: LIBBLER
