‘Global firms are paying closer attention to SEA’s tech talent pool’: Glints CEO

Glints is one of the few companies that raised late-stage investment in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Singapore-based online career discovery and development platform has since grown fast. However, the current economic situation has brought some new challenges for the talent platform.

In this interview, Glints Co-Founder and CEO Oswald Yeo talks about the new challenges and how the company tackles them, the market, and the learnings the company made.

Excerpts:

How have the past 2-3 years been for Glints from a business growth perspective?

At Glints, we continue to help over 120 million people to grow their careers and to be the leading talent platform in Southeast Asia. We continue to double down on our efforts to grow our employer base globally and talent base in Southeast Asia, while focusing on creating deeper value for professionals and employers with product and talent innovation.

Since 2022, our employer base has grown to 60,000 global and regional startups and enterprise clients including AIA, Ikea, GetGo, KKday, and Gameloft. Our talent base has grown to 5 million.

The company also sees positive contribution margins across all major business units, with Indonesia and Vietnam markets continuing to be the biggest contributors. We have also been hiring (albeit more conservatively) for our product, engineering, and data teams.

Looking at the macros, we continue to be bullish on employers globally hiring talent in Southeast Asia given our strong talent community in the region and to save costs.

We also continue to see employers outside Southeast Asia looking to tap into our strong talent pool. In Hong Kong, China, Australia, and Japan, employers are looking to hire strong business development and tech talent overseas as they expand their business footprint and as the local talent pool becomes more competitive and costly.

This is reflected in encouraging trends in our data. On the demand side, Glints’s revenues have been growing at 88 per cent at a three-year CAGR. And on the supply side, our marketplace job applications are up 98 per cent y-o-y.

Also Read: Non-revenue generating jobs tend to be more affected in the current downturn: Glints CEO

We remain confident in the prospects and opportunities for the technology and human capital industries in Southeast Asia. As employers all around the world look to be more cost-efficient, remote and cross-border teams in Southeast Asia will be increasingly attractive.

Do we see an end to the raise-cash-burn-cash growth model and the emergence of the ‘make profits, sustain & grow’ model?

We certainly see an industry shift towards the ‘make profits, sustain, and grow’ model. The concept of blitz scaling is mostly foregone as VCs (and their LPs) need a clear path to profitability.

At Glints, we continue to stay true to our overall company strategy, though we like many other startups, need to adapt and be more disciplined in our approach. This means being laser-focused on being lean and operationally efficient.

What learnings can early or growth-stage companies make from late-stage companies?

The key learnings are:

1) It’s always who before what. Pay extra attention and time to get the people right at all levels.

2) Be disciplined and stringent in recruiting the right talent for every role at every level. Prioritise culture fit, mission alignment, and resourcefulness. As a startup, they may not check every box but if they demonstrate the ability to adapt and grow, this is more valued.

At Glints, we have a lengthy but highly effective A-Players (i.e. high performers) recruitment process. We also remind ourselves to not give in to urgency bias.

How is the mindset and cultural shift happening internally, since we are in a high-interest rate environment and funding isn’t going to be as easy as before?

Not unique to any startup, we’ve had to make hard decisions that impacted every team member. While we have always believed in persevering through challenges and being resourceful in the face of adversity, we are not immune to the current environment and needed to find ways to adapt our business.

In this process, we remained steadfast and understood the need to be as transparent and communicative to every one of our Glintstars as possible on where the business stands, where we are going, and why we need to make certain decisions.

How are startups tackling talent issues?

Across the board, we are seeing startups being more conservative in who they are bringing onto the team even if they are in a financially strong position. Startups who are looking to stay default alive may expand existing team members’ roles. We’ve also seen founders taking on more operational roles, taking on the responsibility of product or business development officer.

In general, tech roles such as software engineering, product, and data science will continue to be sought-after in Southeast Asia. To fill the gap, we see three trends. One is that while salaries continue to increase, the growth rate will be much lower than in previous years from upwards of 30 per cent to 10-20 per cent per annum. So, for startups that are in a good position, now is a good time to hire strong tech talent.

Second, Singapore-based businesses are building teams to complement a Singaporean or Singapore-based core, usually at the more senior levels, with remote teams built in and around teams. At Glints, for example, we help a lot of employers based in the city-state to tap into both Singapore and the region’s talent pool to build such teams that can have a hub in Singapore supported by developers in Indonesia and Vietnam, customer service, or back-office in the Philippines and so on.

Third, global employers are paying closer attention to Southeast Asia’s tech talent pool, particularly in Hong Kong, China, Australia, and Japan. SMEs are looking to build teams to support digital transformation. We are currently working with employers to fill tech and business development roles as companies shift to the path to profitability.

Chinese companies we have been speaking to look to expand into Southeast Asia and looking to make their first sales and business development hires. The hires are either extensions of their headquarters team or these hires are used to expand regionally or globally.

How does the current global economic slowdown affect your business, and what steps have you taken to mitigate any negative impacts? Have you noticed any changes in customer behaviour or demand, and how have you responded?

At this time, we are confronted with two hard truths:

1) We don’t know when the market slowdown will end and 2) there will be a continued slowdown in hiring in the meantime as economic recovery is uncertain. How this translates is that employers will be more conservative and cautious in making hiring decisions and there is a shift to hiring revenue-generating roles such as business development, sales, and marketing.

At Glints, we are taking the following steps to support our client base.

Also Read: Tech companies lay off, now or never for smaller startup

First, as employers are becoming more cost-conscious, we are helping global and Singapore-based startups and SMEs across the region save costs by building remote teams across Southeast Asia (e.g. Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia).

Second, with digital acceleration due to COVID-19, we see increased demand from SMEs to build tech teams to support in digital transformation.

Third, for Glints, we continue to focus on strengthening our own core fundamentals to better support our clients.

How has your financial strategy changed in light of the current market conditions, and what measures have you taken to ensure long-term sustainability?

As the current market conditions become uncertain, our clients’ demands have been affected. We have become more prudent in our financial strategy with more focus on runway management and operational efficiencies.

We have taken measures from tightening budgets across different functions, reducing the cash proportion in our compensation, and rigorously reducing potential inefficient spending.

Can you speak of any recent fundraising efforts, and how those efforts were impacted by the current economic climate?

We closed our US$50 million Series D round in the middle of the pandemic (from investors such as DCM Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital, Monk’s Hill Ventures, and Fresco Capital), which put us in a strong cash position. However, we continue to take proactive steps to strengthen our core fundamentals and to be adaptable and disciplined in today’s environment.

We will use the capital to deploy more efficiently and strategically toward long-term investments such as product development. We also have more than enough runway to ride the current downturn to allow us to invest in the long term to serve our talent and employer base.

Can you discuss any cost-cutting measures you’ve implemented, and how those measures have impacted your business operations? Did you lay off employees to stay afloat in the market?

In response to the current market environment, we took immediate cost-cutting measures. We froze hiring, reduced perks and expenses and the entire management team took voluntary pay cuts. Yet, this was not enough.

While layoffs were our last resort, we realised that to adapt to the bear market and strengthen the resilience of our business, we must restructure and operate as efficiently and lean as possible.

As such, we conducted a restructuring exercise in December where we reduced our workforce by 18 per cent. This decision was not taken lightly and we have taken all measures to ensure this is a one-time occurrence and that there will not be another restructure shortly. Despite the short-term disruption to the business, our company has remained resilient and has gradually recovered as of today.

Have you adjusted your growth projections or other key performance indicators in light of the current economic climate?

We have adjusted our growth projections to focus more on growing efficiencies and contribution margins this year. We are more focused on efficiency uplift and paving the way to sustainable growth. At the same time, we continue to regularly review and have adjusted our phasing of expected growth given current market conditions. On the other hand, we will continue to invest in our products and diversify our revenue streams. We are also confident in our projections for user acquisition.

Can you speak of any market opportunities that have emerged as a result of the economic downturn, and how your company is capitalising on those opportunities?

We are seeing increased market opportunities from 1) global employers particularly in Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and China looking to build remote teams in Southeast Asia to save costs and tap into a strong talent pool. These hires are either an extension of their headquarters team or part of the company’s expansion into Southeast Asia or globally, 2) Singapore-based businesses are building teams to complement a Singaporean or Singapore-based core, usually at the more senior levels, with remote teams built in and around teams.

At Glints, for example, we help a lot of Singapore-based employers to tap into both Singapore and the region’s talent pool to build such teams that can have a hub in Singapore supported by developers in Indonesia and Vietnam, customer service or back-office in the Philippines and so on.

We are helping companies in a few ways 1) helping them recruit for roles given our strong Southeast Asia network at 3-5x cost savings 2) our Managed Talent service where we support the onboarding process, administrative and legal requirements, and any other needs in onboarding and managing a remote team.

How do you balance the need for short-term financial stability with the long-term goals of your business?

Our long-term goal is to become the largest talent community and ecosystem in Southeast Asia. To do that, we still have to invest continuously in marketing and product development/innovations to realise our long-term goals. To balance the need for short-term financial stability, we are pacing our investments with care, keeping a close tab on revenue and customer acquisition costs.

Can you discuss any plans you have for diversifying your revenue streams or expanding into new markets in light of the current economic climate?

We have our geographical expansion plan to serve more employers in China, Australia, Japan, and Hong Kong. At the same time, we are also diversifying our revenue streams in Indonesia by expanding our online product suites which allow employers to have better access to our talents on the platform.

We are also diversifying our client base working more closely with SMEs and sectors that have been resilient during this downturn including FMCG and financial services.

How have you been able to maintain a strong company culture and keep your team motivated during these challenging times?

It is mission-critical for the leadership to constantly communicate and reinforce our core values at Glints. We also want to encourage employees at all levels to participate and provide their views on company direction to foster a sense of belonging. We encourage teams to also work from the office to connect and collaborate. We have since implemented a hybrid work-from-office arrangement across all offices. We continue to create more feedback loops and open dialogues to address any cultural shifts.

With this said, we openly share progress, plans, and challenges. At the end of the day, we focus on anchoring the team back to our mission and purpose. We share success stories and stories of the impact we continue to make on the 120 million lives and tens of thousands of employers we currently serve.

Can you speak of any innovation or new product development initiatives your company has undertaken in response to the current economic climate?

A key focus for Glints when it comes to product innovation in the near term is shifting towards a mobile-first, user experience. We’ve seen triple-digit growth in the last quarter alone in our mobile user growth and adoption.

To increase our talent pool, we are rolling out upgrades in candidates’ job search and job recommendation relevancy. We are launching chat-based application features, and also plan to introduce new features including video and interview scheduling on our platform.

For example, a new chat feature we will launch on our mobile app will allow talent to directly reach out to hiring managers, reducing the friction for talent to discover relevant job opportunities and connect with employers.

At the same time, we are ramping up our college partnership programmes in Indonesia, supporting fresh graduates with career discovery and job search tools to navigate the downturn.

—

The post ‘Global firms are paying closer attention to SEA’s tech talent pool’: Glints CEO appeared first on e27.