Hügga’s Holistic Compatibility Approach Addresses Blind Dating in Recruitment

Recruiting an employee can be an expensive proposition. 

There are the costs associated with job postings and advertising; hiring and recruitment placement agencies; in-house recruiting; job fairs, networking events, and campus recruiting activities; and pre-employment screening that could include background checks.

According to Indeed, most companies can expect to pay between $4,000-$20,000 to hire a new employee, not including salary and benefits.

So as an employer, why wouldn’t you want a sharpened process that, above all, increases the rate of certainty and likelihood that you’re choosing the right person for the job? Why not disrupt the status quo?

That’s the question that the team at Hügga has for employers who need to boost their ranks. And yes, they have a solution.

With the goal of eliminating the transactional nature of platforms that link tech workers with companies, the Hügga team has launched a “Holistic Team Builder Platform.” 

Hügga’s career social network allows young tech pros to develop meaningful careers that align with their individuality. The Hügga platform harnesses AI to fuse social and matching network features for the optimization of job recommendations and proposal of career paths. Perhaps most importantly, Hügga seeks to find the ideal company culture fit for candidates. 

Think of it as a professional Match.com for the tech industry, said Hügga Co-Founder and CEO Mariana Cordero. In so many words, employees and employers can meet and date before they marry. 

But the holistic approach also accounts for so much more, things that truly represent the whole person, things that include teamwork skills, technical skills, workstyle, personality traits and hobbies. At the same time, Hügga is using hard data to help tech companies and employees find each other, assess each other and, finally, decide if a match is at hand.

“Now, when you hire someone, how much do you really know about them?” Mariana asked. “If you’re the employee, how much do you know about the people at the company? Everyone is making a very big decision based on a two-hour interview, or a couple of two-hour interviews. And now you have to work together for eight hours every day, for years.

“Not every employee is worth the time and expense. Not every company is worth the time and expense.”

Mariana considers Hügga to be a solid alternative to LinkedIn, because it takes the hiring experience far beyond simple profiles. 

Consider, for example, self-assessments. These play a pivotal role in the Hügga process. But the startup approaches these evaluations in their own way, with easy-going, fun, and playful tests—no more long, boring, traditional tests.

Do you prefer to work in the morning or later in the day? Do you prefer to work in an office or remotely? What are your teamwork skills? Do you work well with others or do you prefer to work alone? 

These are some of the basic but critical self-assessments that allow Hügga to streamline its hiring process, which began to emerge some years ago. Adding to the singularity of Hügga is its use of memes in personality tests. Utilizing a range of clever characters, including those from television’s “The Office,” “Spongebob Squarepants” and “The Simpsons,” Hügga illustrates some of the many personalities of people looking for jobs. These personalities are matched to the memes and, while providing a laugh, also offer depth when it comes to generating chemistry and productivity in a work environment. 

The roots of Hügga can be traced back several years to when Mariana’s husband—who would later serve as Hügga co-founder—owned one of the biggest software technology agencies in Chile. He was having problems with recruitment that revolved around scarcity in the market and a skills gap. 

Mariana at the same time was working for the competition as a digital transformation consultant. 

She worked often with teams, seeking to understand their dynamic. 

And as someone who prides herself on being a team player, Mariana at past jobs had felt discouraged as a member of a team with the wrong chemistry, or no chemistry at all, that was slowing down the entire operation. As a result of this experience, while working as a consultant, she ended up moving quite a few team members around in search of the perfect fit—which was not always found.

Simultaneously, she said, “I was also seeing all the struggle my husband was having recruiting the correct person and retaining the correct person.”

That’s when he suggested they launch Hügga. 

“He said, ‘We need to create this platform for a company’s internal use, to make people happy and to put them where they want to be—we can make the best use of their knowledge, so everybody wins,’” Mariana recalled. “I was thrilled because I was working with so many companies that had the same problems.”

Mariana’s next move was to leave her position as a consultant, take over at Hügga and remove the blind dating from employee recruitment at tech firms. 

Visit hugga.io to learn more.