Talent outsourcing company, Andela Wednesday, announced it is expanding its offering beyond engineering talent to include design, data, and product management.
The announcement comes six months after Andela closed a $200 million Series E, estimating the company’s value to about $1.5 billion, documenting its place as one of Africa’s unicorn startups.
“Having worked across the continent and beyond, we know that the tech ecosystem does not just need only engineering talent,” Agnes Muthoni, Director of the Andela Learning Community, said of the move.
The onboarding process for the new set of technical talent will include English language and soft-skills assessments, technical assessments, and a portfolio review.
This comes on the heels of its new platform for talent matching, which the company says is designed to create a “more direct and personalised hiring experience” for both talent and recruiters.
This new platform is designed to create a direct and personalised job search experience initiating a positive hiring understanding for both the recruiters and the talent.
The Andela story
Andela launched in 2014 as a global talent network that connects companies with vetted, remote technical talent in emerging markets with a hands-on matching process to help clients scale their technical team.
Its mission seeks to train and provide career opportunities to software developers and cultivate Africa’s IT talents while providing access to a highly-skilled resource pool for these global technology companies.
The company, already recognised for its concentration on high-quality global engineering talent from over 100 countries, has now expanded its offering to include designers, product managers, and data talent. To mirror this growth, Andela is also launching a new brand identity.
It is launching a self-serving option for its talent matching platform. This new platform provides companies with the option of tackling this hiring process themselves.
Agnes Muthoni says:
“Our data-driven approach to connecting talent with global opportunities now offers personalised and bespoke experiences for recruiters and candidates alike. Talent can now choose offerings that better suit their skills and lifestyle, while recruiters can quickly identify and hire candidates with the right skills and experience for their organisation in as little as 48 hours, helping them increase efficiency and productivity”.
Agnes Muthoni.
How it works
The company’s new platform uses data-driven technology and algorithms to make smart match recommendations instantly. With the absence of the traditional lengthy contract periods or unnecessary calls with sales teams, the platform cuts down the time it takes for hiring managers and recruiters to move through the hiring lifecycle. It focuses on presenting quality talent immediately.
To get started on the new platform, hiring managers simply create a company profile, post a job, and can see their curated candidates instantly.
Andela’s matching accounts for depth and breadth of skill requirements, time zone and working hour overlaps, industry expertise, and team fit.
Another cool feature is the refining of its personalised recommendations. As users accept or reject recommendations, they are also asked for specific feedback. With each bit of feedback, the platform becomes more personalised.
Also, job hunters (talents) can see how well their skills match up especially with their other competitive peers via a clear and concise graph visualising compatibility, skills and preferences.
Andela has focused on helping companies build remote engineering teams by giving them access to the best software engineers globally.
In fact, hundreds of leading companies like GitHub, Goldman Sachs, and Cloudflare already leverage Andela’s platform to scale their engineering teams quickly and effectively. Today, this new platform reflects the evolution of both the company as well as the global talent industry. The brand evolution brings a contemporary look while better connecting with the company’s human-centric mission.
“This is why we’ve built our new platform — to help talent find jobs that match more than just their technical skills. Instead, we help them find careers that match their lives. This works well for recruiters, too. Instead of wasting time sifting through resumes and screening calls, our platform identifies talent that fits their exact needs, helping companies find top talent in less than two weeks, and often in just two to three days.
“In many ways, Andela’s brand has been a source of inspiration to software developers around the world who share our belief that brilliance is evenly distributed. That said, brands have to evolve alongside the companies they represent. I’m proud of what the team delivered and excited to show the new Andela to the world,” Jeremy Johnson, CEO and co-founder of Andela says.
The new platform is programmed to help recruiting companies find top talent in less than the estimated time set aside by the hiring managers whilst providing them an easier approach to their talent search.