Japan’s AirIntern helps startups improve their branding, hire new staff

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See the original story in Japanese.

Startups are typically shorthanded when it comes to man-power. But if your brand is not very popular yet, and you may have a tough time hiring new talent. Tokyo-based startup Humandyne launched a new service today which might be a good answer for startups struggling with this the issue.

The service is called AirIntern, but it’s not actually focused on getting interns. Rather it introduces your company by showcasing company profiles, the working environment, voices from your employees, and job descriptions. In comparison with conventional recruiting sites, AirIntern contains rich content like pictures from offices and video interviews with employees (In this way, it seems more like US-based The Muse). You can see an example below, featuring an interview with Kazuo Ikari, the CEO of Whyteboard, a startup that operates a flea market app Listor.

These video clips are created around positive feedback from people like executives, hiring personnel, and public relations staff at a company. The startup plans to stand out from competitors by using rich media content to clearly describe a company’s culture.

To make shooting video interviews efficient, the company plans to enlist available cameramen and writers using a cloud-based system. This is similar to AirBnB which uses available cameramen to shoot accommodation spaces for its website.

Employer Branding

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Crowdworks’ hiring page on AirIntern

AirIntern is intended to help companies improve their ’employer branding’ efforts. Employer branding is seen as a key part of a corporate branding, telling potential employers the attractions of your company. Like many established companies, startups can also benefit from such efforts to hire strong talent.

The website focuses on how much user traffic it can drive to your hiring application form. The company will charge you on a monthly basis, for content production and advertising, depending on how many positions you are hiring for. You can add available job descriptions to the website at any time. In many ways, the service is an extension of your hiring page rather than a recruiting site.

The company is also planning to add a user profile feature soon. This will allow users to keep updated on available positions from companies they like. The aim here is to create a pool of job seekers.

Job seekers can stop looking when they are hired, but the website encourages them to keep looking for opportunities even when they are satisfied with their current position. This is sort of similar to LinkedIn.

Humandyne’s CEO Taichi Ebitani says:

We want to give people more employment options. If you are interested in joining emerging businesses or startups, I think you should. By providing more options, we hope that working at startups could be considered mainstream rather than just an escape from working at an established company.

AirIntern aspires to enlist over 100 companies to the platform by next March.