Atma CEO Reveals Systemic Problems in the Blue Collar Recruitment Process

In early May 2022, Atma announced its debut through a $5 million pre-start funding from AC Ventures, Global Founders Capital, and a number of angel investors. His big vision is to redefine the job search and recruitment system for the lower middle class (blue collar workers).

Currently, the Atma application can be accessed by the public through the Android platform, offering a number of features such as a validated locker, instant application process, CV creation platform, and community service.

DailySocial.id opportunity to talk with Atma Co-founder & CEO Edy Tan, discusses the story behind the development of Atma and its future plans.

Starting from the driver partner Gojek

Before building Atma, Edy was Chief of Driver at Gojek who is responsible for improving the welfare of driver partners. Every day he communicates with drivers, to formulate the best way to increase their income.

"At that time my perspective was how to increase partners' income and reduce their [operational] expenses. However, when a series of strategies were being built, in March 2022 the pandemic came which caused the number of orders to decrease [especially for transportation services]. Partners online 24 hours, but on-job only 2 hours, the rest hanging out on the street, playing Tik Tok, or other unproductive activities. Order"There are few partners, there are just as many partners," said Edy.

Then, at that time he decided to conduct a survey to ask driver partners directly. "Sir, if I give you more order [because of good performance], do you want it or not?" The answer given actually made Edy feel slapped, a partner at that time said, "Actually what we need is not the amount order or more income, but income stability."

This is a difficult thing, different from the corporate, employment model on-demand tend to have unstable income. At that time, Edy answered, "If you want stability, don't you want to look for a permanent job? [full time]?" Then the answer given became a second slap for Edy, "It's not that I don't want to, but I don't know how."

For the most part blue collar worker, job information mostly relies on word of mouth, unfortunately only a small scope --- such as from relatives, friends or neighbors. On the other hand, access between employers and job seekers is problematic, especially when third parties play a role, such as having to go through agencies, asking for registration fees, threats scam [fraud], and so on.

On the other hand, the workers also do not have enough insight to know how to apply well, make a CV, interview guidelines, and so on.

Systemic problems

When investigated, it turned out that this problem was not only felt by motorcycle taxi drivers online, but it has almost become a growing issue in the lower middle class segment. From there, Edy was interested and challenged to find solutions to the problems that exist in the worker recruitment system at this level.

"When I find out, when do people need to look for work? So the answer is: when they don't have a job, stop working because the company is unhealthy, or are not happy with the work they are doing. Unfortunately for the lower middle class segment the third reason doesn't apply. And for me, it doesn't make sense. "Because from the company side, they said it was difficult to find people," said Edy.

Then, when we explored it further with a survey, there was a process flow that left job seekers emotionally traumatized. Edy explained, usually someone will send applications to a number of vacancies (even dozens). Then he will go in 'ghosting zone', sometimes waiting a long time for a call or getting unclear news. Because it's been a long timeghostingFinally, when a job comes in, it is immediately accepted, and the average wage is sometimes far below the UMR (DKI Jakarta). They were forced to take the opportunity.

"Why should that be? Apart from that, there are many companies that have problems finding employees, especially for workers with salaries under IDR 5 million," added Edy.

On the company side, it turns out there are problems too. In his observations, Edy divided companies into three categories:

So when you ask HR at the company, what is the best way to get ideal workers? One of them relies on recommendations. If there is a vacancy and an employee recommends someone they can trust, it will usually be quicker. Once or twice we met, immediately made an offer. This model will return to the conditions above, workers only relying on information by word of mouth.

Then the normal recruitment process can be very long. Usually companies will ask for a CV, then conduct a telephone interview to validate the validity of the data provided. Once the recruiter feels satisfied with the candidate, he will schedule an interview with user. This process takes weeks, even months. And if we dig into the root of the problem, the process takes a long time because many unqualified candidates enter the application process.

This is the issue that Atma is trying to solve through its products match-making (based on qualifications, skills, and culture fit). User experiences who want to build through Atma, companies don't have to wait long to get candidates right after them posts a job. There is no need to wait for candidates to apply, because they are immediately provided with recommendations of people who match their qualifications.

Meanwhile, for job seekers, for example driver partners, when they have finished fulfilling orders, they can open the Atma application to join a community. There he will get various information about new opportunities, jobs with higher salaries and close to them.

Services provided by Atma

Atma describes himself as social job platform powered by community. This is the value proposition of the product. In job marketplace in general, people from various age ranges, various social demographics, various economic classes mix together. Meanwhile at Atma everything starts from a closed community, built from community offline from several places, then pulled to online.

Before entering the platform, each candidate will receive what is called a "internal employee scoring" seen from their intentions for work, character, and so on. This is information insider obtained from the community, is also intended as initial stage curation. And when they have entered, then they are assisted by the platform to build a profile (including CV).

Each worker can only see jobs that match his or her qualifications. And to determine these qualifications, each skillset measured through a quiz that has been specially designed in the application. So that when a user applies, it is certain that he has gone through several initial stages of screening.

"Previously 80% of a recruiter's time would be spent sorting through spam, doing screening methods, and verify data. The remaining 20% ​​is used to process qualified candidates. "This is what we want to change, in the future recruiters can use 100% of their time to focus only on qualified candidates," explained Edy.

The existing application also allows each person to get the latest data updates --- including for the progress of applications submitted. So that when it's time for the interview or selection process, candidates will also get a notification in the application. This is also intended to prevent employees from doing so ghosting against companies that are difficult to contact.

Atma also does not replace the company's existing HRIS system, but can be connected and integrated with existing systems.

The segment targeted by Atma

In general, the Atma application is intended for recruiting workers with salaries under IDR 10 million. They limit their services to certain industries or business verticals. Because according to Edy, the qualifications for jobs at this level are almost the same for all types of business.

For this segment, quite a few companies use the service outsourcing for the fulfillment of its employees. However, Edy said the opposite, that Atma does not compete with companies outsourcing.

"At the company outsourcing The largest, out of 100 candidates, usually only 20 qualified workers are converted. "So actually they also become our clients, because they have the same problems," said Edy.

Regarding the business model, he did not want to explain it explicitly. However, it is said that both the company and the candidate actually have the "purchasing power" to pay. From internal surveys, 95% of companies are willing to pay to get qualified candidates. Meanwhile, 70% of prospective workers are willing to pay to get a better job opportunity. In fact, many workers are willing to spend money to take part in training and even pay for CV beautification services.

"Currently according to BPS there are 206 million working age population. 131 million people are already working, Atma wants to help them find work with better salaries. Then 9 million are still unemployed, here Atma helps them find work," explained Edy.

Atma's next target

Edy is reluctant to mention the metrics he wants to achieve. What he emphasized was that Atma would always have principles “community first”, including products will be designed to suit community needs. In this pre-initial phase, what you want to focus on is giving a good impression to its users, for example by solving the spam problem above from the company side. For the funding obtained yesterday, the focus will be much on product development, to market , and build a solid team.

"The name of our PT is Atma Meraki Nusantara. Atma means the essence of life. Meraki is from Greek, meaning to do what is appropriate for the body and soul. Meanwhile, Nusantara represents Indonesia," explained Edy.

At the end of the discussion he explained why he finally chose to build Atma with the current business model. Personally, he is always comfortable doing something that has a good impact and helps people. “Back when I studied at Boston University, I found satisfaction in being fellow to become a teacher for prospective students who want to enter my department. "There is satisfaction in seeing other people succeed," he said.

And in building his startup, he has 5 main principles that he adheres to:

• Whatever is built must have a big impact and be able to bestairs with products, not with operations.
• The business you are working on is guaranteed to be sustainable. As is enduring problem statement, there will be good income potential there.
• Intellectually stimulating. The business you build must be truly interesting, at each stage there are new problems that can be solved. For example, for recruitment the existing problems are as described above, but in the future it will be different, for example to face the automation era. Things that are always challenging make you not get bored quickly.
• Game of scales, there must be Return of Capital which is good for the company. This is also the reason why pre-seed funding they are classified as large, because para founder don't want to build a business that is haphazard.
• Lastly, do points 1-4 with people you really like.