Kalibrr: Paul Rivera left his dream job at Google to go back to his home country.

"Paul Rivera creates Kalibrr, a tech startup company that revolutionizes the recruitment system in the Philippines."

 

Entrepreneur creates a hassle-free online platform to make recruiting easier in the Philippines.

 

They say that everything starts with an idea--whether it be a business, a passion project or even a movement. However, to Filipino entrepreneur Paul Rivera, he believes that a business venture will be successful if you find a relevant problem, and back it up with a feasible solution.

 

Like many Filipinos, Paul’s  family moved to  America, in search for greener pastures. However, little did he know that his career and business would actually boom in his home country. “While I was at Google in 2006, a friend of mine reached out and said ‘Hey, I want to start a BPO company in the Philippines, you’re Filipino so why don’t we do it together?’, Paul shares.

 

“[Usually] most Filipinos who grew up in America, don’t want to go back to the Philippines, but I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was trying to do that in Silicon Valley but I didn’t have a good idea and the ones I tested failed” Paul shares. So Paul thought that moving back to the Philippines would be a good risk to take and after only 7 months at Google, he left to seek opportunity in his homeland.

 

“I wanted to start right away and thought I fail, I will fail early,’” says Paul. So at 24 years old, he moved back to Manila, and had a fresh start as Co-Founder and President of Open Access BPO. 

 

From problem to business idea

 

How will you know if a certain problem can be turned into a business solution? The answer is simple: experience it firsthand. At his BPO company, Paul was experiencing a lot of difficulty in recruiting and screening applicants. “It was hard to find great people and it was also discouraging to see great people, many of whom were college graduates, who didn’t know how to find jobs that they were fit for,” says Paul

 

After five years building his BPO to nearly 1,000 employees and working with some of the best brands in Silicon Valley, Paul decided this was another risk worth taking. “I realized that I’m a creator. I want to solve bigger problems. And this constant pain in recruitment just kept hitting me in the face,” Paul explains. “For two years, I kept working on ideas, and it wasn’t until I met up with my old friend from Berkeley, Dexter Ligot-Gordon (current Co-Founder), that I decided to make something out of it. From that meeting, we were able to start what became Kalibrr,” says Paul.

 

  

Kalibrr as a helpful tool for jobseekers and employers

 

In the Philippines, it’s a bit challenging to find a job that matches the job seeker's skills and capabilities. And on the other hand, it is also a daily struggle for an employer to find the right person, amidst all the potential candidates. Through this problem, Kalibrr made it their goal to make recruitment hassle-free.

 

“Our mission is to help people find great jobs,” says Paul. The way we do that is through a platform that allows jobseekers to create a rich profile that takes assessments in order to be matched or recommended to jobs that want their skills and experiences.”

 

“Since we’re doing matching, the value that we provide for employers is to automatically identify the best people who are applying for their jobs. This is so they spend their time recruiting the most qualified people first,” says Paul. Through this straightforward process, Paul says that this makes them different from their competitors. “With our competitor platforms, you have to manually match and rank the potential employees, whereas Kalibrr can do this automatically – allowing employers to spend the most time with the most qualified people first. In addition, because we use assessments, we allow people to showcase their skills to employers, even if they don’t have a college degree, which is important for giving greater access to opportunities to people who don’t have the means.”

 

Advice to young entrepreneurs

 

“It’s hard to start a business. So don’t just jump into it, just to make a start up,” Paul adds. “You have to find a problem that is important to you, and use technology as a lever. Then, take your time to build a world-class team which will build your world-class product and empower them to own the problem they are solving. ”

 

Furthermore, Paul advises new entrepreneurs that patience and hard work goes a long way. “I’ve been at this for five years, it took a long time to get to this spot. You really have to work hard everyday in order to overcome obstacles and have the resilience to continue to work even if it’s not working and for a long time, it was not working” he affirms.

 

Pulling from Paul’s empowering story, his journey sets a great example to young entrepreneurs to strive hard and make solutions out of problems. After all, everything does not happen overnight.

 

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