Weploy CMO Ben Eatwell: “We Want To Help Businesses Challenge The Status Quo”
Weploy began with a shared realisation between two friends that recruiting quality staff had become too complicated and it was high-time so declutter the process.
Based in Melbourne, the start-up combines Tinder-style online skills-matching with Australian job market, and in doing so, rids eager employers of the strenuous – and at times incredibly uncomfortable – recruitment process.
To sign onto the app, candidates complete questions about previous experience, undertake a cognitive and psychometric test and finally an interview with the Weploy team.
Once this is checked-off, Weploy uses this data to match candidates to jobs at hundreds of employers on-demand.
To find out more about the innovative start-up, B&T sat down with Weploy chief marketing officer Ben Eatwell.
So first off, what interested you about Weploy?
It was a risk to leave a company like Linkedin for what was a start-up business that had been operating for less than a year, however, when I met with Tony the co-founder, he told me about the vision of the company and it really resonated with me.
Tony explained that their purpose was to take the fear out of not having a job so that young people and entrepreneurs can run their own business and always have an opportunity to have an income on the side as best suits their lifestyle and needs.
I also liked that the Weploy vision was to increase diversity in the workplace and remove unconscious bias.
We know that these increase business performance and so I saw the opportunity for growth.
What part of your professional life is keeping you up at the moment?
The growth of the business.
Weploy is growing fast but as a marketplace, we need to ensure that we are growing both sides of the business; i.e. both the supply (Weployees) and the demand (Weployers) in lockstep.
In order to achieve scale, we need to design and build efficiencies throughout our business practice and processes. When you’re in hyper-growth mode opportunities come at you from all angles so we have to stay focused on our core product and build our competitive advantage.
Part of that comes down to building a growth-minded team and developing leaders who are empowered to “own” their part of the Weploy growth strategy.
What’s on the top of your to-do list at the moment?
The number one priority right now is to build a world-class team who believe and share the Weploy vision of creating a fearless and empowered future of work where people can work to live.
Whilst the team absolutely need a start-up mentality, they also need to be able to take ownership of the vision and the growth and share them in the passion of the Weploy co-founders.
We also need to create scalable processes and stay true to our north star goals.
For example, if something can’t be scaled, it’s not the right model for Weploy as it won’t help us achieve our vision for local and global growth.
How has your role changed in the past few years?
The move from general managerial roles to pure marketing has been a great learning opportunity. I now fully understand and appreciate the nuance around the alignment of the sales and marketing functions.
In my current role, I have a broad remit with responsibility overgrowth of the entire marketplace and total business operations.
Moving from bigger brands in the past to now, an emerging brand, I’m learning a lot about how to best build trust in the Weploy brand.
We have built – and continue to grow – this trust with content throughout the customer journey and importantly build and improve the product with a maniacal focus on the customer. We’ve also leveraged our customers a lot, through testimonials, case studies and referrals which has worked well.
What do you see as the biggest marketing challenge within Weploy?
For Weploy, we have to learn how to guide businesses to challenge the status quo. Recruitment has been done the same way for a very long time, by using Weploy you bypass the recruiter and go straight to the talent.
More and more though, we are seeing that business leaders from diverse functions such as HR, Marketing and Finance are recognising that removing admin based activities from their staff – and using weployers for such responsibilities – creates a happier work environment, creates more agility and productivity. In fact, I remember one employer telling me their staff likened Weploy to ordering a pizza – it’s quick and fast.
So in one way I have a relatively easy job as there is so much ‘buy in’ to our product once they’ve tried it the first time.
I don’t think you’ll find a startup say scale and growth is not a top priority but the biggest challenge is communicating with the wider team on what opportunities shouldn’t be pursued. The new and shiner often look great from afar but unless it’s aligned with our strategic plan we have to pass.
What’s the biggest opportunity?
For me? It’s that we’ve only just begun and we’ve already got an enviable client list, that’s not all down to product and marketing, but rather we’re surfing a wave of change in the recruitment space.
Hiring managers are fed up with getting inconsistent talent and being sold to with zero transparency in the process. That’s really exciting for me.
Alongside that is growing first nationally, and we have aggressive growth plans in place, closely followed by expansion into Europe and Asia.
The US will also be a major market for us. Whilst there is a lot of competition in this market, no one is really doing what weploy offers in the white-collar space.
AI and automation are on everyone’s lips, what do they mean for you?
I studied computer science at university and wrote a few neural networks so come to the terms with some knowledge but some healthy scepticism on what’s possible vs what’s promised.
At Weploy, automation is definitely important when designing for scale but also we use machine learning to match candidates to the right jobs at the right employers and constantly refine that matching algorithm.
However, it should be noted that in the interview process, we still rely on human interaction, and this was a choice as we wanted to ensure a human element.
In fact, we also tested a chatbot on our site for a little while but actually got better results when we had a combination of AI alongside a real human.
What’s the one thing nobody at work would know about you/what would surprise them?
I was once a competitive swimmer except I have an irrational fear of sharks and as such I longer compete!
What do you do to relax/blow off steam?
Play with my daughter who is 17 months old.
Go to the gym which I find really helps clear my head.
Talk shop to my other half who is also in a marketing leadership role, I love having a sounding board and she always has great insight.
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