Recruiter's own software Firefish goes to market
Firefish, a spin-out software company from Glasgow-based specialist IT recruitment firm 9-20 Recruitment, has formally launched.
Wendy McDougall, managing director and founder of 9-20, will reduce her operational duties at the recruitment firm to focus on the new company, whose web-based e-recruitment and talent management product was borne out of its own needs.
McDougall, who has been involved in IT projects and IT recruitment for more than 15 years and who also ran a software company, told Recruiter that she grew frustrated with existing software so put an in-house development team in place in 2005. “I wanted software to help us provide a unique offering through digital recruitment and by building our online presence,” she said. “After a year of trying to make it work with bolt-on products, I decided to invest in our own development team.”
Interest grew around the product when 9-20 started to win awards in areas such as online recruitment and innovation, and it decided to turn its own software into a commercial product in 2009, based on the software-as-a-service model. Recent clients include Taylor Hopkinson, which specialises in recruitment for the renewable and clean technology sector, veterinary recruitment specialist Recruit4U and WorldTeachers.Net.
Firefish’s usability is one of its main selling points, McDougall said. “A lot of vendors went down the ’one screen, one view’ route but in doing that have over-complicated things,” she said, adding that Firefish has also put a lot of effort into embracing the new social media channels. “With the injection of social media into the recruitment market we’ve got to adapt to candidates being more dispersed across the internet,” she said, explaining that Firefish allows recruiters to link up all these pools via its hub and then drive messages to both the active and passive candidates in these pools.
“We’re allowing the candidate to freely use the internet and social media channels as they want but we’re able to keep in contact with them as they do.”
Firefish has separate recruitment agency and corporate products, as well as an industry-specific offering for the veterinary and homecare sectors. VetsNow, which provides out-of-hours emergency veterinary care for more than 350 vet practices across the UK, is one of the early adoptors. “It’s reduced our admin and because a recruitment specialist has built the system, it fits in well with our processes,” said recruitment team leader, Lisa Docherty. “In some cases it’s actually made us question how we do things and help us cut down on some of our processes.”
