Placement Partner — Martin Venkov CEO

- Hello, how are you doing? Welcome to it. It is what's involved on a Monday night. I'm gonna introduce you to my special guest in just a moment, but I have to tell you, and I'm sure you're sick and tired of hearing this, but I had the strangest experience today. So, you know, I saw all the announcements last night and went, okay, I get it. I get what's happening. And I believe that our president did a fine thing. So off this morning off I go, because I had to get a prescription, repeat prescription. And I thought I'd go and get some water because we live in a plot and the water there is not that cool. So we normally have the bottled water. And the man at the bottled water shop said that people have been queuing since hop past eight this morning to get water. And I said, well, can I just leave my two bottles here for you to fill up and I'll be back. I went into the discount where we stay and people were going absolutely insane. But this is the bit that got me. They were buying basketfuls of Listerine. I don't know what Listerine does. And I went home, eventually I got home 'cause then I made the fatal mistake of going into the pick and pay afterwards. Let me tell you, it was like a swarm of locusts had been going through that place.

I don't know, I don't know what people are doing. I think if you are hoarding and stocking up, I think you're crazy. I think we need to be aware of it. But man, don't buy like that, okay? Let's just do this responsibly. But have you got any idea about Listerine? Like why Listerine? 'Cause I tried to Google it and I didn't find anything. I found a little write up somewhere that said it's like one of those urban myths or whatever that Listerine can help you with this coronavirus. But really, really guys, Listerine, I don't know. I think just be safe, wash your hands, that kind of thing. Anyway, rant over. We are going to be talking to my special guest in studio tonight and I'd like to say a very warm welcome to Martin Venkoff. Hello, Martin. - Hello, David. - Good to have you in studio with us. One of the brave ones, hey?

Martin is the managing director of a company called Placement Partner. And now, when I first heard of Martin, I thought this is interesting and I don't know where it goes. Of course, a whole lot of shows that I've had planned kind of, I don't know, these days now, in today's times, seem a little less relevant than what I thought. But I think this one is relevant because what you guys do, Martin, is you have a software for employment agencies. - That's right, yeah. - Okay, so let's find a little bit. Tell me a little bit about Martin himself because, I mean, you do have an accent, so I'm assuming you're not South African? - Yeah, yeah, David, I'm originally from Bulgaria. - Ah, okay, Venkoff, that makes sense now. - Yeah, you know, my family and I immigrated here in the early '90s, so I'm more South African than Bulgarian. I studied, I went to school here, I went to university. It's just, despite all that, I still sound that way. (laughing) - But not a lot, I must tell you, not a lot. - And yeah, as I said, I actually, to give you a little bit of a story of how I got into placement partner and how this process started is, I studied in the University of Pretoria. I was doing my informatics degree, and in the last year, I decided to get a job and obviously get some experience.

And in that process, I ended up working at a recruitment company in Brooklyn. And it was a part-time position. It was an IT support consultant position, which was nothing exciting, but I was over the world because it was experience. And during that process, I learned quite a lot about recruitment, even though it was a short stint. I got to experience what recruitment consultants back then were feeling in terms of pains and challenges doing their everyday jobs. And this was back in 2003, so electronic systems and actual recruitment management systems were not really that well developed.

And strangely enough, while I was busy with that job, I actually met my future business partners because that particular company where I was working, they were essentially test driving an early version of placement partner. And going back to what I mentioned in terms of challenges and in terms of pains that the recruitment consultants were experiencing, they really had a big problem with too much paper, no real good way of classifying CVs and searching CVs. And when I came across placement partner, I realized this is exactly what this system actually speaks to. It's a centralized system that keeps track of the whole recruitment process. It allows clients to collect detailed databases on their candidates, on their clients, on their job specs and vacancies. And it really maps the whole recruitment process. Which then, in terms of the whole recruitment process, I would maybe just summarize that the typical situation would be a job spec would come in from a company and obviously a consultant would load their job spec. They would advertise it as part of the process. They would then open the advert out to prospective job seekers or candidates who will in turn apply for the position and all those applications would come back into a central searchable database which allows these consultants to cherry pick the best matched candidates, create a shortlist and obviously send them through to the clients, ultimately getting them placed.

- I mean, you make it sound very simple, but I mean, this must have taken some doing. I mean, is this something, did you put this whole system together with a team or how did it work? - Yeah, so initially we had a small team, especially when I joined back in 2003, there was really three, four of us that were working on it. I was actually one of the developers at the time. And to be honest with you, David, it's taken us the good part of two decades of constant development and constant redevelopment of this system. And we will never stop developing it. The simple reason for that is the requirements change constantly, business changes and we, over the years, we've learned to listen to our clients and listen to what they would like to get out of the system. And that of course keeps us busy constantly. So yeah, it hasn't, it didn't happen overnight. It's been a long process and it will be a process that continues. - Fantastic stuff. My special guest in studio tonight, the Managing Director of Placement Partner, Martin Venkov will be back in just a bit and then I'll find out a little bit more about who kind of uses the system, that and more when we come back. It is, as I said, what's involved.

My special guest in studio from Placement Partner. It's all about recruitment software. Martin Venkov is the Managing Director. Just before the break, Martin, I did say, you know, I'd like to find out, you know, who would use this service of yours? And then you said, you're gonna share that with me and then we're having a bit of an interesting chat about the whole sort of the software initially when you set it up. So let's start off with the software 'cause that must have been a big challenge because if I came to you and said, okay, I want it. It's not like it was in those days. It's not like it is today, is it? - Oh no, no, it's changed quite drastically. Maybe I can just explain what the software does, what, you know, as I mentioned, the Recruitment Management System tracks the whole recruitment process. And the idea behind it is that it makes recruitment consultants' jobs easier. Now, to answer your question in terms of who our clients are, primarily our clients are recruitment agencies. However, we've got quite a few clients that are in the corporate space that have recruitment divisions or HR divisions and they have a recruitment need. And, you know, the system caters for them as well.

So essentially any company that has a recruitment need, the ability or the need to advertise positions to various job portals or their website, you know, our system integrates with the major South African job portals and a couple of the international portals as well. So the intention is that you create one advert and you distribute it to a multitude of channels and you get a larger reach. And whichever job seeker or applicant finds this advert and applies for it, that application comes back into a central searchable database. So the intention there, again, is to streamline the process and to allow our clients to search one database. Another big plus there is that, and actually I found that out all those years ago, is that a big pain for recruiters is too much email. You can imagine if they advertise a position, they get 2,000 responses in their inboxes. And the problem with that is that you've got to read through those thousands of responses. So what happens with our system is we bypass the need for applications to flow back into inboxes. They flow back directly into the system and that gives you the ability to search based on what you're looking for. So it matches the right skill to the position that you're looking for.

- I'm probably the worst example of somebody that's a job seeker 'cause I think my CV would basically be a couple of lines and goes, what does David do, things and stuff, and likes to talk. But I do recall in the old days it was a process because then the guys would have to advertise it in the newspaper or whatever the case may be and then you'd have to get a CV made and then you send the CV in. So I can understand there would be a whole lot in terms of the email and stuff like that. But now, surely with the advent of cloud computing and things like that, it's made your job somewhat easier. - Absolutely, yeah, and it's an interesting point that you're making. Back in the day, back in 2004, me and my partners made this very big decision at that point which was, at the time, also a very controversial decision. We decided we're going to go online. The cloud computing wasn't the buzzword yet and we thought we need to take our system online. And the logic behind it was that we couldn't continue servicing our clients by running from office to office to run various updates. So the solution was to centralize it, put the system online and allow us to really become a, you know, to have national coverage.

So we did that very enthusiastically and realized that we were in trouble back then because we would walk into client offices and upon walking in to do a demonstration, we would hear the dial-up modems. And, you know, it was very difficult to sell back then because ADSL networks or ADSL connections weren't mainstream and very few of our potential clients were actually connected all the time. So initially we had mostly large clients that obviously had the means to have dedicated lines to connect their offices. And luckily that period passed quite quickly, about 2005, beginning of 2006. ADSL did become a lot more mainstream, you know, and South African connectivity improved. And that allowed us to reach, you know, recruitment companies and companies across the country. But it really allowed us to have a system remotely, you know, to do customizations on their system remotely without necessarily having to track to their offices and install something physically. So that was a, it was a game changer for us. And I suspect even for the industry, because as far as I know, back then, when we did this in 2004,

I don't think there was another South African company that had taken that bold move. I know that overseas there were companies that had online packages, but in South Africa it was a very new thing. And it was challenging because we had to, we had to prove to business owners that their data is much safer somewhere in the cloud than under their desk. - Well, that's what I was gonna say, because I mean, that would have been automatically a big concern is like, what about security? 'Cause now, you know, I'm sending you all of my personal information, how secure is this? - Correct, correct. And that's the, you know, as I said a little bit earlier, these days, keeping your intellectual property offsite is the best thing you can do. It's the norm. You don't want to be keeping your business information somewhere within reach, within your office, because you expose yourself to theft, you expose yourself to damage or fire. It makes sense to hand that information over to a company that does that for a living. So our biggest responsibility with all our clients is to keep their data safe and to keep it accessible at all times. - So you've obviously then, in the system, you've got built-in redundancies, you've got fail safes, et cetera, et cetera.

- Yeah, yeah. So we've designed it in such a way that, you know, our clients are almost never offline. You know, we have, and our technical team has a lot of responsibilities in making sure that we are using the latest security standards and updating them at all times, because we're holding people's businesses in our hands. - Yeah. - And it's, but it's a win-win scenario because it's our main business and we rely on it. And luckily we've been doing it for almost two decades, so we've gotten very good and comfortable with it. - Yeah, so I mean, technically, and particularly with today's times, you know, if people are working from home and they are in the recruitment business, they've got their laptop or their computer at home, they can just log in and work. - Yeah, work. You can go with your laptop to your client, have a cup of coffee and capture a spec and provide them with some information. So as I said to you, it was a game changer. It changed the way that recruitment could be done in South Africa. You don't have to run back to the office and look at a filing cabinet and run back with a few CVs. You could provide those CVs in front of your client. And yeah, I mean, especially now, it's the situation we're going through currently in the country with trying to limit physical contact with people.

I guess a lot of our clients will probably take that step and tell their consultants to work from home and do recruitment remotely, which might keep them safer. - Let's hope so. My special guest in studio from placement partner, the managing director, Martin Venkov, a special guest in studio this evening, Martin Venkov is the managing director of placement partner, recruitment software. Now, Martin, we were talking about the software and it sounds absolutely amazing. If anybody's in the recruitment space, this is something that they need. But one of the things I'm very passionate about is small and medium businesses. And when I hear you talking about your product, I go, "Yeah, that's okay, but I don't know. How would this smaller guide, would they be able to benefit from it?" Tell me about, how do you make your software available? - Okay, so absolutely. I mean, and I can relate to that 'cause we are also a small company and we also have gone through this process of growing very gradually, but it's very simple. Our system is a subscription-based system. So if you have a single user or two users in your company, then you pay a two user fee every month. We also have clients that have multiple branches.

We have clients that have 30, 40 branches countrywide. And obviously their monthly fees are a lot more than the smaller companies. The big point here that I'm trying to make is that the system is the same. So single user, that's full functionality and it's up to them to make it work. So everybody has equal opportunity to make this a success. And there shouldn't be a discrimination almost on the size of the company. And it's something that has been, well, it's very close to our hearts, myself and my partners because we've had quite a number of success stories with companies that we have dealt with where there's been a one-man show working out of their house. And a few years later, they've got a multi-national company with a number of branches catering for the whole industry across South Africa. And that's great to see. And it's also great to know that we may have contributed to that, which is very rewarding for us. - Yeah. And the thing is, if I understand it correctly, the software itself can cover all aspects of recruitment. So whether you're recruiting for the IT industry, if you're looking for salespeople, whatever you're looking for, this software is able to collate all of that information.

- Yeah, absolutely. So what happens is we would initially, when we get a client on board with the system, we'll take them through a process and we're gonna show them how to customize their own system to fit their niche in their business. So say if we're dealing with a company that does a lot of IT recruitment, we would obviously assist them in customizing the system so that it speaks more, the IT language. We also have customers that do generalist recruitment and they will be able to hire from engineers to IT people, to financial managers. And the system allows you to customize all those, essentially, job categories. And of course, when you advertise the positions, you're getting a mix of job applicants from various sectors. - Now, what I find amazing, 'cause you mentioned this earlier on, is that essentially you guys were the first in the country to do it. So these online job portals, I can't remember any of them, jobs 24, or what are some of those other ones? - Yeah, there's careers 24, a peanut and career junction, so we are not a job portal. - So they came after you guys. - No, no, no, they were around when we were, I mean, as far as I remember, career junction and peanut have been around for maybe even longer than we've been around.

But they offer a different service. They offer a service for, essentially, for candidates. And well, I guess candidates and clients, but they allow clients to post their adverts and positions and they allow for candidates to create the profile and apply for these various positions. - Ah, okay. - Now, what happens with our system is, and that information does not essentially belong to the clients. With our system, it's their own internal database. So our system connects to these channels. So we have an integration with the career junctions and the peanuts and the careers 24s and job mail. And that allows our clients that are also clients of theirs to create one advert as opposed to 15 different adverts. So they advertise once, they distribute it to those channels, and whoever applies it to any of those channels comes back into that central searchable database. But that information belongs to our clients. - Okay, that's making some more sense. - So those would essentially be sources. There would be sources of fresh applicants into our clients' databases. - Okay, fantastic stuff. We are turning to Martin Venkoff, Managing Director of Placement Partner. Right, my special guest in studio with me is Martin Venkoff.

He is the Managing Director of Placement Partner. So Martin, we've spoken about what it does from a recruiter's point of view and recruiter's perspective. But what about job applicants, job seekers? Does your software have something that benefits them as well? - Yeah, yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, our clients would all advertise positions, and especially what we discussed earlier about specific specialized niches. We allow our customers to customize their systems, but also customize their application forms. So that means that if you advertise an IT position, you have the ability to speak IT. - To speak IT and ask the more IT-related questions on your application forms, whether they be on the job portals or on your website. And that is quite useful for candidates or for job seekers because they're gonna see that. They're gonna say, "Oh, these guys speak my language." And I'm more interested in applying here because they're clearly specializing in my field. And then a job seeker would apply for a position. They would fill in the application form, and their application would be put forward for that position. And of course, the recruitment consultant will see that on the system front.

We've also made it quite a lot easier for certain candidates when they reapply for positions at a specific company. We'll pick them up based on their ID number, and we'll say, "Dear Joe, welcome back." We'll send them a one-time pin, and they can use that one-time pin to update their record. So let's say they finish their latest course in development. They'll be able to go back to that record and update it as opposed to starting from scratch. - Okay. So is there now a specific way that you would put together on the portal, put together a CV for somebody? - Well, a candidate or a job seeker would go through the application form. If they take the time and complete, or give a detailed record, essentially what happens is that record that comes into the recruiter system can be generated into a CV, because that record will contain previous employment history, previous qualifications. So to a large degree, it might be ready to be packaged into a CV and sent out to potential companies that are looking for such candidates. Our system also, we customize our client CV templates. Essentially, every one of our clients has their own specialized format and with their logos and letterheads and everything, and that allows them to present candidate CVs to their clients in a much easier way.

So once you have the information in your system and you've classified it correctly, you then have the ability to search it very easily. And once you search it and have a short list of people, you can then present these people to the various companies in a much easier way. - Thanks, it sounds absolutely fantastic. Before we let you go, future plans for Placement Partner, I mean, you must have something in the works now. What are you guys busy with now? - We are, at any given time, we are always busy with multiple projects. We've got a big event coming and if all goes to plan, it will be released in April. And there's a big upgrade coming across the system for all of our clients, and we are very excited about that. And this is something that happens quite often. We, as I told you, right at the beginning, is we haven't stopped developing and we'll keep developing into the future because recruitment in South Africa evolves and our system needs to evolve together with the requirements. And in terms of new plans and new developments, something that we have implemented relatively recently and some of our clients are using very well is,

the concept of advertising positions is established and everybody does it. But there's very few companies that are able to showcase talent. And showcasing talent is important in South Africa, specifically, because there's a shortage of skills. There's been a shortage of skills for a long time. So we allow our clients that have the right skill to be able to cherry pick their top candidates and showcase them either to their website or link them to their newsletters. And in that way, they become proactive. They don't wait for companies to contact them and say, "We've got positions." You essentially advertise talent and attract companies in that way. So it's a great client development process

and also a great way to ensure that you create positions. So you're being proactive. And that's something that we've been working on and we're refining. We're also working on video interviews. - I think that's gonna be massive. A lot of this stuff, 'cause we do a lot of, in my other life, a lot of digital marketing stuff. And video, all indications are that video is gonna be massive. - Yeah, yeah. And it's early days, but from the tests we've done and from some of our clients that have piloted the concept, it's, I agree with you, I think it will be-- - Well, some of our clients actually said to us, and sort of we do the digital thing and we do the sales training as well. And they've said to us, "Listen, you know, what about doing some video stuff, video testimonials, this kind of thing?" So we've actually are in the process of actually opening a division of the company that does that. That'll go out and do the interviews. We've got the green screens, all the fancy lights and everything. So I think it is the way forward, you know? And, you know, video interviews and all of that. - I think that's brilliant. - Yeah, yeah. - I think that's absolutely fantastic. - It works well. I can maybe just explain it.

It's a very straightforward process of our clients creating templates, questions, and distributing those questions to hand-picked candidates, job seekers. And then these job seekers are able to record themselves either on a smartphone or on a laptop. And obviously the response comes back into the system, links to the candidate record. And, you know, recruiters are able to see what a person looks like, how they sound, and how knowledgeable they are on the topic. - Well, listen, you might be right on the money there with everything that's happening around the world. Maybe video recruiting is gonna be the way to go. - Yeah, I guess it will be, but hopefully for the right reasons. - Hopefully for the right reasons. Martin, if somebody wants to get hold of yourself or, in fact, Placement Partner, where's the best place? To the website? - Best place is the website, yeah. www.placementpartner.com. - Placement Partner. I initially went Placement Partners, but it's Placement Partner. - PlacementPartner.com. Our website will basically give you a lot of the information that I've given you tonight, and it has contact details on it, and you're more than welcome to contact us, and we can show you what the system can do in detail.

- Wonderful stuff. Martin, thank you so much for coming out tonight, having a chat to us. We wish you all the best, all the best for the future. And hey, yeah, check it out. PlacementPartner.com. That was Martin Venkov, my special guest in studio tonight. Thanks, Martin. - Thank you very much, David. - All right, before we get up and out of here, I was gonna do another interview tonight, but things have changed. So we were gonna be chatting to somebody from one of the banking institutions, and very, very late. They declined the invitation to come into studio, and you can understand why. So I'm gonna leave you in the capable hands of Otto. It's Otto, mate. I believe Kaz will be up a little later on tonight. Right now, though, let's talk about this coronavirus, this COVID thing. It's time for communities and business to work together to face the challenge of COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus. Mix 93.8 FM in partnership with Mozambique restaurants and the Citizen newspaper have engaged with Sister Desiree Varner to create eight steps that'll contribute to slowing the progress of COVID-19. If you feel ill, self-isolate and stay at home while seeking medical advice. Ensure that you are entirely open and honest with the medical practitioner prior to your consultation to ensure adequate preparation.

So you need to know that and just take care out there, okay? All things being equal, I will catch you again next Monday at seven o'clock for yet another edition of What's Involved. Until then, take care of yourselves. Stay safe, be well, and thanks for listening.