New Recruits: Meet the Lot Fourteen startup on the hunt for talent

Two South Australian software engineers who played a crucial role in SA’s COVID-19 response are using the power of artificial intelligence to help employers battle skills shortages and build talented teams.

Matt Bauerochse and Will Russell have launched Stone & Chalk based start-up Outhire – an AI-powered marketing software solution that streamlines the recruitment process by delivering targeted job ads and campaigns.

The pair may not be familiar to many South Australians, but their work is: they designed and developed the mySAGOV licensing app and the COVID-SAfe Check-in app, which were indispensable tools in tracing close contacts and keeping the community safe during the pandemic.

With Outhire they are hoping to make it easier and painless for employers to find what Bauerochse says are the “passive talent” – the 70 per cent of candidates not actively looking for work or may be working for a competitor.

Customers can use existing job descriptions or prompt Outhire’s AI-powered engine to generate the description using inputs such as job title, experience level and skills required.

Outhire then evaluates the ad to ensure it has essential elements such as benefits, roles and responsibilities and company culture. It will also detect if the language may inadvertently influence diversity or introduce bias in the hiring process.

Outhire then crafts the ad copy which can be tweaked by clients to meet their tone of voice. The AI platform then determines the best social media platforms or professional communities through which to distribute the ads.

“Talent teams have recognised the inefficiency of traditional job boards. These teams aspire to deploy job advertisements on social platforms but are blocked by a lack of marketing expertise necessary for launching an effective job campaign.” Bauerochse says.

“They can generate a job description, generate a job ad and our AI tech determines the best channel through which to deliver that ad, it’s extremely targeted.

“To validate Outhire, we spoke with numerous customers, getting their valuable insights regarding the challenges they face in reaching passive talent.”

Bauerochse says the Outhire idea was borne out of his challenges in trying to recruit the right talent for his South Australian team at Honeywell Sine, where he was head of software engineering until January this year when he launched Outhire.

He says Outhire can create and distribute job ads and employer branding campaigns within minutes. Helping customers to dramatically reduce their time to hire.

Outhire’s client roster includes another startup in the innovation district: Optible with whom it partnered to deliver digital job ads on billboards and bus shelters in Adelaide’s CBD.

Bauerochse says Outhire has huge scope to deliver marketing campaigns that help to tell a company’s story.

“Customers are telling us they want to run employer value proposition (EVP) campaigns, providing insights to what it’s like to work for their organisation; we really think that the digital billboard channel is particularly geared towards EVP videos,” he says.

“The employer brand is really important in the current market because you might not be hiring today, but you might be in a few months’ time; so, you need to be top of mind for future candidates.”

Bauerochse says the Lot Fourteen and Stone & Chalk community are a great environment to build the business.

“It’s a really great place,” he says. “Lot Fourteen is a dynamic and collaborative environment; it provides the perfect platform for founders to connect, exchange ideas, and receive valuable support from like-minded individuals.

“Additionally, the precinct hosts a variety of events and resources designed to nurture and propel start-ups toward successful scaling, making it an ideal destination for ambitious entrepreneurs.

“There’s obviously also a lot of potential customers here, as well.”

Outhire has four staff in Adelaide and wants to expand, which Bauerochse is used to doing having scaled his team at Sine from 20 to 80 as head of engineering. “We’d like to have some more employees certainly in sales, and operations and probably another engineer as well,” he says.

Bauerochse and Russell are speaking with angel investors and venture capitalists about a capital raise.