Toronto-based startup aims to become Uber of talent acquisition

The Gig economy model offered by Curasion involves temporary positions, independent/freelance workers and short-term contractual engagements.

The human resources industry is going through various digital disruptions which are changing the way employers hire, retain and develop new talent. Curasion Inc., a startup based in Toronto, aims to disrupt the process of talent acquisition by using Uber’s ‘Gig economy’ model for enterprise hiring and recruitment.

‘Gig economy’ means an environment where there are always temporary positions and companies contract with independent/freelance workers for short-term contractual engagements.

The business model of Curasion works by connecting the Fortune 500 companies, which it calls the eager customers, to the pool of independent talent, who are paid on per-contract basis.

Companies enter a temporary position that needs to be filled and Curasion offers them a pool of top in-demand independent workers to choose from. Here, the temporary position entered by the company is automatically matched with the skills, experience and availability of potential independent workers.   

This business model claims to solve the problems in traditional hiring processes like that of cost, speed and quality.

The human resources industry is going through a massive digital disruption that is changing the way employees are hired, retained and developed in organisations. Many startups have come up with disruptive solutions to HR services. For instance, LinkedIn, Indeed and Talent.io changed the way the recruitment industry works more than five years ago. Concepts like reference checks, unstructured interviews and peer-to-peer hiring have emerged as important aspects in recruitment.

Today, most HR managers want their work to be incorporated with artificial intelligence (AI), so that they can better manage the HR services.

Unlike traditional staffing agencies that depend on static databases to fill positions in companies (which is often done at the last minute), Curation has a database of pre-curated talent that includes both past and present employees. This pre-curated talent is wide-ranging and cost-effective for companies, which can use its powerful search engine to narrow down their search and view the candidates who meet specific skills and ratings.

Curasion helps companies to build their own talent pool, hire via self-service and redeploy talent, which solves the problem of engaging with costly recruiters. It claims that companies that employ 5000 contractors in a year can save talent acquisition fees between $ 91-110 million by shifting to Curasion solution.

Curasion’s  first customer was consulting firm Deloitte Canada, which admitted that implementing the solution exceeded its expectations. There are 17 other customers already queued up for the solution. Curasion claims that for the first 12 hires, the average time to hire has reduced to 4-6 days (from 4-6 weeks), with a saving of $ 20,000 per hire and zero fall-offs. It has the potential of saving about $ 8 million in costs in a three-year time period, adds the company.