Ovation Technologies: Empowering Small Businesses to Hire the Best

September 21, 2012
Written by
Twilio
Twilion

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John Wagner, Co-Founder of Ovation

When it comes to hiring, small businesses often find themselves hopelessly
outgunned. While large companies have the resources to blanket the Internet with
job posts, and have an HR department to sort through thousands of resumes, small
business owners often have limited time and funds to devote to the hiring process.

Ovation Technologies, which launched this summer, offers a suite of mobile and
cloud-based tools designed to give small businesses an edge by making it easy
and affordable to advertise jobs on social networks, rank responses, process
applications and complete onboarding paperwork. A key feature is proactive alerts
—the ability to notify a business owner in real time about a desirable new
candidate.

To roll out proactive alerts, Ovation needed a reliable, cost-effective SMS
infrastructure, preferably with global reach. After reviewing different providers,
Ovation selected Twilio. “We were looking for an SMS platform that had a good
reputation, an easy API and was .NET based,” said John Wagner, chairman and co-
founder of Ovation. “Twilio fit the bill.”

Cost was also a factor. In order to deliver cutting-edge recruiting technology to
small businesses at a reasonable price, Ovation needed to keep its own costs low.
“Twilio was perfectly priced for a start-up like ours,” Wagner said.

Thanks to Twilio’s clear documentation and sample apps, a single developer was
able to integrate the Ovation recruiting platform with the Twilio API in just two-and-
a-half days. “We found it incredibly simple to go from nothing to having a fully
functioning SMS platform,” said Wagner.

One major benefit of proactive alerts is increased customer satisfaction, Wagner
said. Business owners can be anywhere and receive immediate notification when a
resume has been submitted. They can instantly review Ovation’s evaluation of the
candidate and decide whether or not to make a connection.

As Ovation expands into the global hiring arena, Twilio’s international reach will
provide crucial support for both recruiters and jobseekers around the world.  And
down the road, Wagner envisions adding an interviewing tool facilitated by Twilio’s
recording capabilities.

“The goal is to span the lifecycle of a candidate, from finding them to hiring them,
including all the steps in between,” said Wagner. “With Twilio, we know that our
clients will receive reliable, real-time notifications whenever key events in the
recruiting and hiring process are happening.”