Our Story

In a short time, we’ve grown Avoko from an idea born out of sheer frustration into the first referral recruitment platform that harnesses professional talent advocacy and genuine expert vetting, whilst also creating a better experience and service for all our stakeholders.

We Started By Simply Listening

We listened to the awful personal experiences from businesses and employees, to the desperate social media posts and to the generic, negative LinkedIn broadcasts. It was obvious that no one was having a good time of it and that specialised skilled recruitment was crying out for change. That’s when we began to build the Avoko platform.

Original idea

One of our founders ran a successful IT consultancy for over 15 years. However, he was also immensely frustrated by the experience of trying to hire the most talented contractors using a the standard agency and job boards model. Painful experiences led to a reliance on his core teams informal (yet trusted) referrals – and they always produced the best hires!

Broken recruitment model

We knew the traditional recruitment model was in a tough place but we needed to understand the deeper issues, so our extensive research began. Why were businesses still suffering poor experiences and service levels despite paying more? Where did all the resentment and distrust from job seekers originate? Why was technology not helping to solve this?

Research and validation

We started to really get under the skin of the entire process. We conducted many meetings, interviews, focus groups, stakeholder research and conversations with Senior Business Leaders, Hiring Managers, HR Managers, Project Managers, Recruiters, Employees and Contractors. We even spoke with a few good, traditional agencies. Some wanted to joined us!

Talent wars

Our research showed companies were essentially overspending yet not gaining the quality talent they needed. They were losing the war for top talent and wasting precious time trying to find critical hires! Businesses were so entrenched in routine recruitment channels there was no motivation to do anything differently. They were crying out for new and better solutions.

Talented rely on networks

Our research established that talented people were attracted to great jobs, roles and projects with the people in their networks playing a very significant role in their trust and motivation to explore new job opportunities. They considered opinions from trusted sources as essential when making any decisions – and equally so when they were the ones hiring. There was a definitive link.

Referrals make the best Hires

There are vast amounts of data and research supporting the fact that referrals make the very best hires. The superior benefits are universally accepted. They are better quality, have the best interview to hire rates, integrate faster, are generally more loyal and outperform other employees, creating better teams. This was to be our foundation.

88%

of employers

rate referrals as their #1 source of quality hire

22%

of new hires

actually came from referrals in 2016

1/16

recommendations are hired

1/153

general applicants are hired

Source: The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC)

Why internal referrals don’t always work

We discovered internal company referral schemes existed in abundance, but were largely ineffective and inefficient. Many are low profile, unrewarding, difficult to manage and take a further toll on company resource and budget.

Avoko is now a reality

We developed a completely unique innovative model to help solve the soulless state of recruitment. Its power comes from a pure and simple focus on creating advocacy referrals through professional affiliated networks and genuine Expert vetting.