Connecting job seekers and recruiters to facilitate employment, the ideas sounds simple, doesn’t it? Abdelhamid Chakiri, Founder of ShoreIN.com, thought so but found that there were very few tools in the market that actually achieve this goal. The computer engineer turned entrepreneur lauched ShoreIN, the first professional social network in Morocco dedicated to employment in January 2014. ShoreIN provides users tools to facilitate communication between recruiters and professional companies in the offshoring sector.
As a team leader at an IT company, Abdelhamid faced the ongoing challenge of hiring the right candidates for his team. Abdelhamid got an idea to create a platform to facilitate the link between recruiters and professionals not only to faciliate employment betwteen parties but also to increase the rate of retention of these employees by ensuring they were a good fit. ShoreIN acts as a professional network which bridges companies and job seekers.” There are recruitment sites and social networks, but ShoreIn.com is a unique hybrid system, "says the young entrepreneur.
Like all entrepreneurs his greatest challenge was finding traction in the market and landing early adopters. "When starting my company I faced difficulties reaching large companies. These big companies are looking for stable businesses to partner with long term. They don’t want to take risk on an early stage business which may close in 10 months”. Looking for a boost, Abdelhamid decided to join the CEED Go-to-Market program. " I already had a prototype, then I pitched to people with real indutry experience. Having an idea is not enough to start a business, so I decided to join CEED to get more feedback and to grow my network.” Through CEED Abdelhamid met other like-minded entrepreneurs growing their businesses, connected with mentors and most importantly was introduced to potential clients.
To remain at the cutting edge of innovation, Abdelhamid aims to adapt the platform to new customer needs. "Our goal: to adapt our product and be more flexible for our customers", highlights Abdelhamid. Today the platform registers on average 2,000 new members daily and to date displays over 90,000 enrolled members. In April,Abdelhamid received a loan from Réseau Entreprendre Maroc from which he plans to grow his company. Due to his early successes Abdelhamid was invited to join the CEED/IBM panel jury to give feedback to those pitching.
