HelloAva
"Indeed really provided [a] good platform for us to look for the talent that fits our team."
Kailu Guan, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer
An AI-powered skincare startup needed to hire licensed estheticians and other highly skilled talent to go from idea to reality. Without a strong knowledge of the skincare industry or how to hire skincare experts, the company’s co-founders turned to Indeed to help them build a global team of 20+ people.
Background: An AI-powered skincare business shaking up the industry
HelloAva is a smart skincare company based in NYC that recommends beauty products based on your skin type. By leveraging AI, machine learning and expertise from real dermatologists and estheticians, HelloAva is an app that offers customized advice tailored to peoples’ unique skin needs.
The business was founded in 2016 by Siqi Mou, Founder & CEO, and Kailu Guan, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer. What started as a MBA class project at Stanford Business School has since grown to a team of employees around the world who are transforming skincare journeys for thousands of people.
“We started just as a big dream between the two of us, but now we have a global team of more than 20 people. So that’s been really just surreal to see that growth,” says Siqi.
Challenge: Lack of time and expertise to hire quality candidates
Siqi’s background as an entrepreneur, investor and financial news anchor meant she understood the business side of running a startup. Paired with Kailu’s expertise in fashion design and technology, the HelloAva team also had the creative side down.
But neither Siqi nor Kailu had experience or connections in the skincare industry. This made it a challenge to find and attract talented estheticians and dermatologists with the right experience, licenses and skills needed to make HelloAva a reality.
As Siqi explains: “One of the big problems we ran into when we were small: we didn’t know anything about esthetics or estheticians and how to hire them. We didn’t really know where to find these great estheticians of the world.”
Not only did they struggle to find the right candidates, but as a working parent to a young son, Siqi also didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to the hiring process: “As a small business owner and becoming a mother, we have so many things to worry about,” says Siqi. “It’s just not practical to always be able to read through like 10 resumes before interviews start.”
Solution: One place to hire from start to finish
By using Indeed, Siqi and Kailu were able to reach candidates with the right skills and expertise. Instead of waiting for the perfect candidates to apply, they also used matched candidates to immediately see lists of candidates whose resumes on Indeed matched their job criteria. With matched candidates, over 90% of employers get quality candidates right when they sponsor their job.*
"Indeed provided a great solution for us. We put in these job descriptions about perfect estheticians and perfect skin advisors we were looking for. And surprisingly, we got so many amazing candidates."
Siqi Mou, Founder & CEO
HelloAva
After they found the candidates they were looking for, the HelloAva team leveraged Indeed Interview to screen promising candidates quickly and efficiently — without ever having to leave Indeed (or the office). Indeed Interview allows you to conduct live virtual interviews with any job you post on Indeed. On average, interviews on Indeed take place just over two days after they were scheduled, sooner than in-person interviews or virtual interviews with a third-party app.*
“Every morning before we go into the interview process we just look through the resume on the [Indeed] platform and we know who we’re talking to, and then when we’re talking to them we know exactly what questions we want to ask,” Kailu says.
Results: A global team of 20+ people
With the help of Indeed, HelloAva has grown to a team of more than 20 estheticians, dermatologists, machine learning experts, data scientists and more.
“I feel like the people that we were fortunate enough to meet on Indeed were very diverse and also very tech savvy,” says Kailu. “So I think Indeed really provided [a] good platform for us to look for the talent that fits our team.”
Not only that, but as business owners wearing multiple hats, Indeed has saved Siqi and Kailu time, kept them organized and taken work off their plate so they can spend time on what matters most to them.
“We’re a start up, you know, people are the only thing that we have,” says Kailu. “The idea can evolve and morph into different things but as long as we hire the right team, then we’ll be able to make the right decisions.”
Indeed helps businesses like HelloAva find the right candidates by providing tools that help employers manage hiring from start to finish — post your job, interview candidates and make offers all on Indeed.
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Source: *Indeed data (US)
