A story of hard graft, hustle, pivots & luck with Justin Falk, Founder of TalentVine

Nicola Steel, Founder of JJP Talent Solutions, talks to Justin Falk, Founder of TalentVine about how hard graft, hustle, pivots and a sprinkling of luck have led to the success of his start up.

TalentVine is a marketplace which connects employers to specialist recruiters with key data & performance metrics. Justin talks about a series of mistakes he made with regards to what he thought employers actually wanted. One of these mistakes was the thought that employers simply wanted the cheapest recruitment solution - he quickly discovered that this was not the case!

Justin spent the first few years doing the grunt work of talking to lots of employers to discuss the concept and validate the idea.  One of his successes led to an introduction to an early stage investor where he gained his first Seed funding which meant that TalentVine could grow.

Justin comes from an employer branding & recruitment campaign background and is not a technical founder.  Apart from a $400 WordPress site, there was no tech until 2 years later.  He then found a tech co-founder, joined the River City Labs Accelerator programme and hired interns before hiring full time employees.

Nicola and Justin discuss how Talentvine handled Covid when the number of roles on the platform dropped from 80 to 4 in less than 2 months.  He ensured that he was still talking to his clients and adding value rather than attempting to sell anything.  Justin also experienced the pain of having to make some people redundant which he found particularly hard.

They talk about how the market has completely changed and the competition for talent has skyrocketed.  Justin's key advice is to ensure that employers focus not just on hiring but on retaining their existing talent.  He also advises that employers partner with a specialist recruiter when hiring rather than a generalist as well moving fast because most candidates have multiple offers at the moment.