North West recruitment app Caroo says Manchester is the place to start a business.
The app, described as the Airbnb of recruitment, uses advanced algorithms to match tech, digital and creative talent to jobs.
“If we get enough people signing up we might come down to London but we like where we are,” said Andrew Deakin, head of marketing for Caroo.
“It was deliberately named the second tech centre of the UK behind London. That was a deliberate choice on the basis that a lot of tech platforms launch in the second city.
“You make all your mistakes, learn your lessons, test your platform with people who care about the fact that you’re a Manchester business, and they will help us and ask to change things.
“Also with some platforms you don’t get the localisation of it, you get inappropriate jobs come through, so we work really hard on the AI in the algorithm to make sure that the matching piece works better and better for people finding jobs.”
Launched in 2018 and currently based in shared space WeWork, the company has since invested £1 million into the platform and has 12 staff.
Since their launch in January, the app now holds 6,000 candidates and 150 brands offering jobs.
“We were fortunate with investment, we had a good investment team from day one and they backed the management team from day one,” he said.
“Not many start-ups have had the backing we have. What we have seen is there is a growing pool of investors wanting to put money in tech.
“It’s a lot easier to find money now and thankfully we’ve not had to go through that process but if we needed it there’s loads of people investing and we’ve seen some really good platforms getting external investment in the north first.
“Manchester has got a growing platform, it’s not as big as London but there’s a lot more players where you can get money through if you’ve got a good idea.”
Deakin also spoke about LinkedIn turning into a recruitment platform but how it lacks anonymity of looking for a new job.
He added: “It was designed as a networking platform but what they realised is recruitment is a soft sector so they started letting people apply for jobs as your profile is your CV.
“It’s now being used as a recruitment platform and they’re spending money trying to do that.
“The problem is anonymity, it’s very hard to be looking anonymously for a role and to make yourself look available for roles on an open platform where your boss is.”
Caroo plans to go national in 2020 and will begin charging for use of the platform, but promise that start-ups will always be able to recruit for free.