How Kalibrr is disrupting the recruitment industry

Kalibrr co-founders Paul Rivera and Dexter Ligot-Gordon

Not every Tom, Dick, and Harry gets to work at Google. Paul Rivera did in 2006. But his stint at the world’s most admired tech giant was cut short by an opportunity he couldn’t refuse: build his own company.

Rivera was born in the Philippines. He moved to the US along with his parents at age five.

After he decided to leave Google, he went back to his home country and started a business process outsourcing (BPO) company. As he was running it, Rivera began to see a skills gap problem in the BPO industry, touted as one of the bright spots of the Philippine economy. “It was hard for jobseekers to find the right jobs for them, and for companies to hire the people with the right skills,” Rivera recalls.

So one fortuitous night, he got together with a Filipino friend whom he studied with at University of California Berkeley, Dexter Ligot-Gordon. The two share a common vision for impact, having worked together in an organization that helped high school students apply for college during their time at Berkeley. “When we saw each other, that connection we had about impact was re-sparked. This was the night that we decided to make a commitment to help jumpstart the Philippine economy,” Rivera shares. They thought: why not build a platform that will revolutionize recruitment in the country? From that idea, Kalibrr was born.

An easier, smarter job-matching process

Kalibrr aims to redefine how companies hire talent. The cloud-based platform assesses applicants and matches them to the right jobs, and if they lack certain skills, trains them.

It disrupts old recruitment systems that the founders claim don’t serve companies well. Job postings on the platform are free. Kalibrr also allows companies to search for candidates in its database for free. What they do charge for is a company’s ability to communicate with a candidate when the company “accepts” the candidate’s application. But even this charge is low at PHP50 (US$1.12) per candidate. Kalibrr essentially took away the usual fees or what serves as the bread and butter of other jobs platforms. “We’re the only platform that allows companies to do this. Others are very protective of their database. We want to open it up,” Ligot-Gordon says. “We’re here to disrupt and tear apart what existed before. The old systems of recruitment are dead.”

Kalibrr has another feature unique to its platform – two-way SMS messaging. Ligot-Gordon explains that when a company finds a candidate on the platform who best fits them, they can communicate directly with the jobseeker through SMS. “When we were working with jobseekers before, we discovered that they check their emails twice a week, but with SMS, it’s every 15 minutes. We’re all attached to our mobile devices.”

This faster, smarter, and cheaper way of hiring is definitely a come-on for companies.

Since the platform went online in late 2014, it has garnered over 65,000 active job seekers and about 3,000 companies, including Globe Telecom, San Miguel, Ayala Corporation, and Accenture. It initially focused on the BPO sector, and then moved on to other sectors. The platform now also counts as clients some government institutions, including the Department of Transportation and Communications, Department of Education, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue.

Rivera says they are addressing a huge pain in the employment process, but more importantly, doing their part in nation-building. “In the Philippines, there’s a hundred million people, 14 million are employed yet 25 percent of this number are underemployed. 10 million Filipinos are abroad to work. We have a big economy, but also a lot of challenges. [Recruitment] is the challenge that Kalibrr wants to take.”

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