Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Tolan.
Josh, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
Growing up, all I thought about was baseball. My goal was to be a professional baseball player. When my career ended during my sophomore year of college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I thought about law school, investment banking, going for my MBA, and other routes, but was honestly pretty lost. The competitive side of me needed something BIG to aim for.
During the summer, I started doing some digital marketing and over the next year, helped grow a company from a handful of people to ~150 in a very short period of time. This really sparked my entrepreneurial spirit and led to the idea for my current company.
When that business was rapidly growing, I witnessed the struggles in the hiring process firsthand. We were wasting a ton of time and effort on the wrong candidates.
I was driving from Chicago to San Diego for my final year of school at UC San Diego (2010-2011) and it came to me.
Fast forward to February 2012 and my company, Spark Hire, launched to the public.
Today, almost 5,000 of the world’s most respected brands trust Spark Hire’s software to help them connect wit the best job candidates faster and easier than ever before.
Has it been a smooth road?
No!
Starting a company is not the right path for most people. I’ve made a lot of sacrifices and worked a ton of hours (currently answering these questions at 11 pm on a Saturday and I’m 6 years into my business!) The process will humble you and you’re going to have very lonely days and nights.
I’ve also made a lot of mistakes.
As a young founder with no experience running a business and no background in software as service, every day is a new challenge and a learning experience.
Building a business is a grind; especially if you have lofty expectations. You need to be super competitive and willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen.
That means pulling all-nighters, working tech support (as a founder) on the weekends in the early days, and putting every aspect of your company’s success ahead of yourself.
For me, my experience in baseball has really helped me become successful. I was never the most athletic, biggest, or strongest, but my drive to outwork others is what pushed my career forward.
The same thing applies to business.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Spark Hire story. Tell us more about the business.
Spark Hire is a video interviewing platform. Our software helps organizations make better decisions about the candidates they are investing time and effort on in a fraction of the time.
The core components of the platform include one-way and live video interviews.
One-way interviews allow recruiters to come up with a series of interview questions and invite their candidates to record selfie-style video responses. Most organizations use this as a replacement to the phone screen as it allows them to gain more insight in less time and share the interviews with hiring managers to get their feedback.
Live video interviews enable a recruiter to connect with a candidate in real time via video. This is pretty similar to a video conference on Skype (or alternative platforms,) but the tool is branded and the interviews are recorded so they can be shared with other hiring stakeholders.
Spark Hire is known for its easy to use software and unmatched customer service. We tell our customers that it’s our goal to be the best company they ever do business with and I believe we do a pretty solid job of achieving that goal.
Personally, I’m really proud of our growth as a company the growth of our employees.
We have almost 5,000 customers in over 100 countries and these include some of the biggest companies in the world.
We’re getting close to 40 team members and it has been awesome to see our employees grow personally and professionally while at Spark Hire. Many people on the team have been here for years and it’s very rewarding to see their advancement.
I also love the culture that we have built at Spark Hire. A lot of effort has gone into the continuous development of our company culture and it has paid off. The difference in our culture from when we started to where it’s at today is incredible.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
We’re still in the early stages in our industry. Even though video interviews have been around for years, there’s still a lot of education to be done and a ton of room to grow.
I see more and more organizations adopting video interviews. We’re on a mission to make video interviewing a staple in the hiring process. There’s no reason that Spark Hire can’t expand to 50,000, 500,000 or 5 million+ customers around the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sparkhire.com
- Phone: +1-224-545-5599
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sparkhire
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/sparkhire
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparkhire
- Other: https://www.sparkhire.com/careers
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