Why we built a completely free CV Builder — The entrepreneurial mind
With the recent beta release of our new free Resume Builder — CVToBe, I am getting constantly asked: “Why are you putting so many resources into a free tool? What is the business model?”. I can understand how it seems illogical to build a platform that it’s sole purpose is to NOT generate income. In this article I would like to share our vision and dream and hope to make the illogical become logical.
Let’s be honest, the world is a place that is run in a capitalistic manner based on economy and markets. There is a cost attached to everything we do and we need earn and spend capital to survive. Those are the rules of the jungle and not following these rules have dire consequences. Yet… here we are, seeming like we are not following basic business survival rules. I will explain our dream, the history of how we started and the road we’re taking to make it a reality.
Less then a year ago, three days before the first Covid-19 lockdown started in Belgium, I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine who owns a Human Resources(HR) firm in Antwerp (M18). He was telling me about his current custom-built Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and how he and his two partners plan to turn it into a SaaS-model and monetize it by selling it to other HR firms. I, coming from an IT and business background, was skeptical to say the least. I have heard it all before. The biggest misconception people have when it comes to IT, is that they assume that once the system/application is built it will run magically and everything will be great. Just like every business, online businesses are a business. What this means is that they require the same, if not more, resources to maintain and turn it profitable. That being said, I was curious. I never looked into HR-Tech from a business angle. As day turned into night we were still talking about his plans and I was getting more and more interested in the business aspect of this industry.
Before I decide if I want to partner in a new start-up, I always research and analyze its current industry-market, growth capability and success potential. Like most entrepreneurs, I have learned from my failures and implement my learnings into every new business I enter, regardless of my position as partner or IT provider, this is my doctrine. As a partner, I don’t want to fail and as an IT provider I don’t want my client to be disappointed. So when I was offered to join this venture, I started researching. My findings were less than thrilling. HR is much more complex than I originally thought. The IT aspect will be every developer’s nightmare and then some. Trying to design an architecture that can be used on an industry-scale seems impossible. There are so many types of HR I couldn’t even imagine how to connect all of them and build a SaaS-model that will fit all. The business aspect was even less thrilling. Highly competitive, expensive to start, different laws per country, high liability and difficult to please clientele. HR is a people business, literally. I couldn’t see how such a project could be successful, much less, monetized.
At this point I was already ready to politely decline the request to join this venture, however — as is evident by this article, I didn’t. Instead I started analyzing the flow of this industry. The flow of an industry is a line with a start and end position, where you add stops in-between and see how the industry works on a macro-level. I stubbornly refused to accept this industry’s (unnecessary) complexity. Why should finding people jobs be so difficult on an IT level, I asked myself. And that’s when it hit me. The industry is still working in an old-fashioned manner. For instance, the average recruiter will spend 40%-50% of their working time inputting candidate data into their system. That is absurd! Doing my research I found no open -nor commercial solutions that were even remotely acceptable to my standards or expectations.
I figured the only way this can work is we provide IT solutions to both ends of the industry. Creating a pipeline from the job-seeker straight to the recruiter and back. That is the only way where we can actually set standards for data and information, by being both at the start and end of the pipeline.
Our dream is automating time. Big words for a big task. Zymmi, the company we formed with 4 partners, is the solution we came up with. Zymmi will hold two separate platforms: CVToBe and Recruteer. CVToBe is a free CV Builder for anyone to use no strings attached. Recruteer is a modified version of an ERP built for recruiters.
So where does this all come together? Automating time for the job-seeker: Imagine the following, when you build your CV on a free platform and several hours/days later you already receive requests from recruiters that want to meet you regarding a position that they think fits your profile. You won’t have to go on countless websites, look for available job positions and apply each time with overly complicated forms etc.
Automating time for the recruiter: Imagine the following, you have just posted a new available job position and near instantly receive CV’s that meet your requirements. No manually inputting of data nor days long searching for the right profiles. Like magic, they will pop up on your screen.
Together, CVToBe and Recruteer communicate via a centralized server constantly matching job-seekers to open-positions and vice-versa. As we are at both ends of the pipeline we can easily transfer the right data to the right places at the right time. Using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) our centralized server will continue learning how to become better at matchmaking between the job-seeker and the recruiter.
All of us, the Zymmi founders, firmly believe and agree that it is unfair to ask a person that is looking for work to pay for anything related to his/hers new job quest. CVToBe is our way of giving back to the community. Job-seekers can use our service for free with no paywalls, ads or any other scheme to make the job-seeker pay. Automating time as a business should prove to be a profitable venture with plenty of revenue models to choose from. That is why we built a completely free CV Builder.
