55. Tempo

Founders: Ben Chatfield and Ollie Povey
Founded: January 2017 (founded May 2017)
Website: www.heytempo.com/talent

Ben Chatfield and Ollie Povey have plenty of experience working in recruitment. Chatfield working in hiring for City pantry and Hambro Perks, and Povey as head of operations for Jobandtalent.

Using their combined knowledge of what people don’t like about using an agency, they created Tempo to “dramatically reduce” time and cost to hire at the same time as improving quality.

Their approach uses video profiles, ‘rich-format CVs (including ratings and reviews, salary expectations and skills), combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to match candidates to jobs that fit their skills and experience. Tempo claims its service works out four times cheaper than a traditional agency; and its fast: 27 minutes to the fastest placement.

For temporary placements, the start-up takes 20% of the candidates wage and charges a £2,500 flat fee for permanent placements regardless of salary.

More than 550 organisations have already hired through Tempo including Monzo, Goodlord, Hostmaker, Nested and Hello Fresh, as well as enterprise customers like The Boston Consulting Group and the Daily Mail Group Trust.

For job-seekers, Tempo enables them to choose how much they earn, get rated for each job, and get paid every week. It currently has more than 10,200 candidates in its talent pool with 1,263 minutes of video recorded.

For the time being the business will continue to scale within London and conquer its office and admin sector before it sets its sight on new geographies and verticals. It also has plans to launch a video interviewing service so “companies can skip the phone screen”.

The estimated $400bn recruitment industry hasn’t much changed its process in the last few decades and Tempo might just be the platform to drag it into the 21st century.