South African startup Wamly is changing the recruitment processes of companies by providing them with one-way video interview software that does away with the need for one-on-one interviews, allowing them to interview more people and better candidates, faster.
Founded in 2018 by Francois de Wet, Wamly allows companies to recruit candidates by sending out a custom link, that will allow the candidates to perform a one-way video interview, just like in real life, but without the need for the employer to be present, allowing the company to interview a lot more people in a shorter space of time.
They can then invite their hiring team to rate, comment and shortlist the candidates based on their video interview, creating a more streamlined recruiting process, as well as the ability to prove ROI on time and money spent.
As an industrial psychologist and talent expert, de Wet worked with many high profile corporates and CEOs. Over the years he noticed that they all had one thing in common – they were highly frustrated with the recruitment process. In 2018, he decided to start a side hustle tending to this problem, and when entrepreneur and Shark Tank SA investor Marnus Broodryk tried out his video interview software in his own accounting firm, he saw the potential to help thousands of companies around the world. Broodryk joined de Wet on the Wamly journey in 2020.
“The interesting thing about our software is that we’re not out to replace any existing recruitment software, nor are we geared and removing a step in the process of hiring someone. However, the gap we did see is the countless, fruitless hours spent on interviewing candidates,” de Wet told Disrupt Africa.
“Wamly’s one-way video interview solution is a complimentary add on that helps to digitise, streamline and optimise the interviewing process. We integrate with many third-party applications and by adding the one-way video interview element, it’s helping to save up to 70 per cent of the usual hiring time spent finding, interviewing and hiring a suitable candidate for the position.”
Generating good recurring cash flow since inception, Wamly’s first investment came from Broodryk, who now operates as CEO, and the company recently also raised a second round of investment from South African venture capital firm Knife Capital. Armed with investment, expansion is the name of the game.
“Currently our focus is the South African market, as we believe there are still many organisations that have not yet incorporated video interview technology. However, we are in all the neighbouring countries, the UK, the UAE, as well as Australia. Expansion is definitely top of mind, especially with the VC funding. We believe that our market is an amazing opportunity for us to really test our solution, and that once we are comfortable to nail it here, the world is our oyster,” said de Wet.
With the concept of one-way video interview software still relatively new, especially in the South African space, customer acquisition can be a process.
“Once we’ve taken the interested company through a short demo of our full system, they almost always dive into a POC period where we get to prove to them the true ROI of using a system like Wamly on top of their current recruitment process – it’s a bit of a mind twister, because the mindset is usually – “by adding more software, I’m adding more admin” – however the opposite is true with Wamly,” said de Wet.
“Sure, you’re adding more software, but the software is designed to decrease your time spent on admin, allowing you to have all your data in one place and helping you to build a database of talent to refer back to in the future.”
Wamly operates on a subscription basis, charging per user, and reports “great” revenues given the relative youth of the business.
“You need to spend money to make money, so we are investing heavily in our platform, our staff as well as our brand through marketing efforts,” said de Wet.
“The biggest challenge has definitely been education. As mentioned, many organisations don’t even know what asynchronous video interviewing is. So in the beginning and to this day still, we are focusing a lot of attention on why organisations should invest in technology like ours and how it will save time and money.”
