SquareHire gives smaller companies a leg up on hiring

Applicant tracking systems allow companies to harness the full-power of the Internet to search for job applicants across the nation. They're behind the job search engines like Monster and CareerBuilder, but such systems are primarily geared towards large employers and listings for individual positions are costly at about $400 a piece. Enter SquareHire, a software-as-a-service application for the little guy on the grow that launched in February.

"I'm focused exclusively on companies with fewer than 100 companies," says SquareHIre Founder Rudy Lacovara. “A lot of people will come to the market and will see that you can make money quickly by targeting your services to recruiters or adding features for larger companies that really aren't appropriate to companies with companies fewer than 50 employees or even fewer than 100 employees."

"I really think that the Internet and the connected market we’re in today kind of democratizes things I think hiring is an exception," Lacovara says. "I think hiring has gotten harder for your average small company. I think they had a much easier time when they could put an ad in a local newspaper."

"It’s not like that anymore. If a small company wants to reach 90 percent of the job seekers in a market they have to use five different job boards or social networks," Lacovara asserts. "To make matter worse…small guys end up paying more to post on those job boards.…They're probably going to pay four times the amount that IBM does to put ads on that same job board."

A large company like IBM is making enough hires on an annual basis that it negotiate posting prices with Monster, he says, but a small employer may only hire one or two people a year, making each post more expensive. "We sell Monster ads to SquareHire customers for $149 for a 60-day listing."

Lacovara explains that the tools provided by SquareHire are geared to meet smaller businesses needs. The tools offered through the company do three essential things: gives a company a hosted career page on their site; publishes job postings to free job boards; and offers applicant tracking. The tracking inputs applicants' input to a permanent database that allows users to rate applicants, review their resumes and other common tasks to the hiring process. Plans are available for free and run up to $99 a month.

The service was previously known as HireFlo but relaunched as SquareHire with more targeted tools, according to Lacovara and it’s retained many of those clients.

"Right now we've got just under 800 companies," he says. He expects the company to grow in 2014, which may require additional staff in customer service and marketing to start. He adds that right now he's the company's only full-time employee.

Contact Confluence Denver Innovation & Jobs News Editor Chris Meehan with tips and leads for future stories at chris@confluence-denver.com.