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Mayo’s MBA classmate, Sarah Rumbaugh, noticed the same things about the recruiting process. But she had come to school looking for entrepreneurial opportunities and saw the recruiting pain point as a business opportunity. She brought Mayo on as a summer intern for the start-up aimed at matching employers with MBA candidates. Their pilot gained quick traction with many companies. Rumbaugh promoted Mayo to co-founder and the pair founded Relish and moved forward in force with their new targeted, segmented recruiting platform, RelishMBA.

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The pitch

Mayo, co-founder, Relish, based in Charlottesville, Va.

“RelishMBA is like a dating site for the job search. Job candidates create targeted profiles for their particular market – whether they are MBAs or other specialty masters degrees. Employers build branding pages with very targeted promotion to the particular markets they are most interested in. We have a filtered search tool that lets users find each other using relevant criteria. Students and employers can engage with each other digitally by sending messages, candidates can subscribe to employer pages to receive updates via email, and we have relationship-management tools that allow candidates and employers to organize notes and information about each interaction.

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“Because existing online platforms don’t cater to the specific needs of the MBA market, companies really spend a lot of time and money investing in on-campus recruiting efforts, which is inherently limited. And in the MBA space, there are particular pieces of information that recruiters are looking for – work experience, functional areas, GMAT scores – that are not easy to find on one-size-fits-all job sites. We help candidates find more relevant opportunities and market themselves more effectively to the right decision-makers.

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“We focus on relationship building and creating a place where employers and candidates could get to know each other and establish connections digitally. Then the actual job posting and application would become a formality after a candidate has established relationships with recruiters and alumni from a company he or she is interested in working for.

“We started by focusing on brand-name schools and highly ranked programs to drive employer interest. We launched nationwide in June 2015, focusing first on the top 25 MBA programs in the U.S. Since then, we’ve expanded to 81 of the top 100 business schools in the world with more than 6,000 candidates on the platform. On the other side, we have more than 65 featured employers using the platform right now. We’ve focused on really top companies and major consulting firms, banks, top consumer brands etc. – companies like Nike, JPMorgan Chase, American Express – recognizable names that attract students interested in those names.

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“We are very much a two-sided marketplace, with employers on one side and candidates on the other. Figuring out the best way to build each side of that marketplace is a challenge that we encounter on a daily basis. Employers want to see every possible candidate. Candidates want to see every possible employer. Starting out as a very lean team with limited resources, we have to figure out where to focus our energies. We have a sales team that reaches out to employers and recruiting staff at MBA programs and we do a lot of direct outreach through student ambassadors and social media. What’s the best way to build both sides of our marketplace?”

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Advice

Elana Fine, managing director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business

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“You really don’t have to reinvent the wheel on this because there are so many two-sided platform business models out there that have figured this out. Find the one that most resembles your challenges and see what you can learn from them.

“Focus your efforts on getting as many people on one side as possible to make your platform a no-brainer for the other side. If you make it totally free for the MBA students and you do a good job of getting them on, the employers will be an easy sell. To attract MBAs quickly, provide some other reason of value for them to be on your site, for example networking opportunities such as those LinkedIn provides or a service like resume help.

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“Make it as easy as possible for both MBAs and employers to join your site. If you’re not already doing it, consider a ‘freemium’ model or trial basis for the employers to get as many of them on your site as possible with the least amount of friction. You can limit it by letting them only post a certain number of jobs initially. I’m sure the companies see the value because MBA hiring really is such a unique process, with companies hiring nine months in advance to fill positions.”

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The reaction

Mayo

“This is great advice and (fortunately) right in line with our plans for the immediate future. We’ve recently raised some capital, and plan on using it for product development efforts to make the site more attractive to candidate users, allowing us to build the user base and consequently drive more sales with employers. We’re also excited about building new Relish platforms catering to other recruiting verticals, and will leverage the lessons we learned in the MBA space to do so.”