Meet Executives Of Busquedas IT – IT Recruiting Startup that operates from Uruguay to the world

First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?

We are great. We really love what we do every day. Since September 2020, our team has grown. Today we are 6 Senior Recruiters and we recently incorporated a new role: Marketing & Social Networks Leader. Every day we feel that our operation grows because the market has no limits and is growing by leaps and bounds. By 2020 we had proposed to strengthen our business in LATAM, going beyond Uruguay. With the pandemic, we changed our strategy, but growth occurred naturally, without realizing that we were gaining visibility not only through client’s recommendations but also through the recommendation of our candidates, which indicates that we have been making a good job.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company?

SOFIA: Búsquedas IT was an IT Job Posting website that was founded in 2011 as a personal initiative whose purpose was to disseminate job opportunities for Uruguay and Argentina. Step by step, the idea began to change due to the success and the traffic it achieved, so I realized that it could become an IT Recruitment Agency. With a very gradual growth, we were laying the foundations to achieve exponential growth over 2018, which currently places us as one of the leading IT recruiting agencies in Uruguay and, hopefully in a short time, in LATAM. It is in that year that Ana and I made our partnership and with whom today we share the same feeling of the search for excellence and closeness in each process that we carry out.
ANA: I joined Búsquedas IT, partnering with Sofía, who in addition to being a partner and colleague, is a close friend. I made this decision at a key moment in my professional career, where I wanted to do something transcendental, that would mean to me something connected with my passion and my vocation. Thus, after having worked for many years in the HR Consultancy sector, I resigned from my job, and with the desire to start my own
business, I embraced Búsquedas IT. I have always been passionate about technology and I have a strong tendency to promote that things must be done with professionalism, with criteria, but always focused on action. It is through action and innovation that with Sofia and also with the rest of the team, we make Búsquedas IT an IT Recruitment Agency of excellence.

How does your company innovate?

We are a team of 6 Senior Recruiters, we work remotely, matching our family, leisure and personal times with work. We believe that work should be associated with passion and not so much an obligation as our parents taught us. We are passionate about technology, we are dedicated to looking for IT profiles all day long, therefore technology is also our main work tool. We innovate in the work methodology: we developed our own approach called “Agile
Recruiting”, changing the way of carrying out selection processes: other rhythms, other approaches, a lot of flexibility but above all: empathy. We have a cutting-edge website with first-rate aesthetics and usability that mutates in design and technology every 2 years always seeking to be critical mainly with ourselves. Innovation is in our DNA. We will not attract the best profiles for our clients if we do not stay ahead, nor would that appeal to us.

How does the Coronavirus pandemic affect your business, and how are you coping with it?

For our business, the pandemic involved many challenges and also opportunities that have really made us grow and empower ourselves as a team. The first months of the pandemic were very uncertain and that logically impacted our work: clients lowered their growth expectations and therefore hiring was suspended. Likewise, for those clients who needed to incorporate talent, it was very difficult to respond with the usual dynamism, since IT profiles
were very suspicious of making a job change in that context. We can say that from August – September 2020, the pandemic opened new paths: IT companies realized that they had to continue growing to meet the demand of those months, they visualized new business opportunities, and therefore, to achieve them, they required
new hires. This had a positive impact on our business: in a matter of weeks we doubled and tripled
open searches and therefore we were able to quickly overcome the months of uncertainty, which were quickly in the past.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

Day by day we make decisions, with the responsibility that this implies. In fact, our job is to help others to make one of the most important decisions: change jobs. We are aware of this, we never forget that we are working with people.
Difficult Choices: do not lower your arms in the pandemic and bet on growing the team at a time of great uncertainty. We had to be prepared for what was coming, and fortunately, it was a success. Lessons Learned: daily. Innovating implies testing, taking risks, and evaluating results: in network management, talking about a job opportunity, in a new way of working with clients. We always learn something, not only about stacks and technology but also about how to do our work better.

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?

We always work remotely. We communicate through different options such as WhatsApp, email, or any meet app. We have been updating our tools: we use slack and create confidential channels with our clients, but we adapt to their daily communication methods. We also use Skype, Google Meet, Zoom, Teams, depending on the client. We adopt the most adjusted technology. We have management software for all our processes so that our clients can see in real-time each movement in their active processes, having all the updated information on each profile that is added to an active position.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Our competitors are all over the world. We always try to analyze the market, understand our competitors, but without neglecting that we need to innovate and stay at the forefront to make our business model work. So, our principal competitor is our own company. Without losing sight of that, our plan is to always be consistent with our intentions, motivations, and interests: those are our rules of the game.

Your Final Thoughts

The pandemic has made us grow a lot in the way we work and the sense of responsibility when offering an opportunity to a candidate. We have learned to say no to certain clients, as well as to protect and build loyalty with
others. We are working a lot in LATAM, and this is a daily challenge we learn about new markets, cultural characteristics, technical skills, and lots of things that have made us much more experienced and able to step firmly in the business and continue to grow.