Plans revealed to revolutionise recruitment and create jobs

December 7th 2021

A Teesside businessman has revealed plans to revolutionise the worldwide recruitment industry and create dozens of local jobs.

In the short-term Kevin Barry, the CEO of Future World Technology Ltd, believes the new 1MinCV recruitment app will help tackle the current recruitment crisis.

“We’re already working with a business in Stockton. They’re desperate for 1MinCV because they can’t find anyone and the old-fashioned paper process just doesn’t work for them,” he said.

The company’s problem is a reflection of both the global and national picture where the pandemic had a major impact on the job market.

According to the UK Office for National Statistics there were 1.17m jobs to fill in October, which was almost 400,000 more than before the pandemic.

In-house and agency recruiters on Teesside face a particular challenge: finding the right people for the 18,000 jobs expected to be created over the next five years with the creation of the freeport.

The early signs are that 1MinCV – which Mr Barry said is the world’s first video recruitment app for both candidates and recruiters – could provide the solution. It received 1.5m clicks in the first three weeks of a pilot test launch and more than 3,000 videos were recorded by jobseekers.

Future World Technology is targeting the recruitment sector which, in the UK alone, will be worth £45b by 2025. Worldwide that figure is nearly $460b.

Mr Barry is confident that 1MinCV will have a significant impact, leading to a major expansion of his company which, he anticipates, will require more than 100 employees to work at a headquarters on Teesside as well as numerous staff around the world.

The team developing 1MinCV believes the app will particularly appeal to younger people who make up the bulk of the job-seeking population and are part of the generation most comfortable with technology. For them it is also free to use.

Recruiters pay for it by a monthly or annual subscription and – said Mr Barry – their workload will be cut by half: “It provides them with the best opportunity to get the right person for the job, quicker and more efficiently. For jobseekers it helps them stand out from the crowd and it’s surprising how much information can be conveyed in just 60 seconds.”

Mr Barry’s determination to improve the recruitment process began in the Kuwaiti desert where he was working for the Kuwait Oil Company. The company was having major problems with a new $100m project and urgently needed skilled people to fix them.

“We had CVs coming in left, right and centre and the time required to go through them, interview and appoint was just delaying what we needed to do and adding to the cost,” he said.

Together with the head of his technical team in Kuwait - Mario Torre - Mr Barry decided that there had to be a better way to find good people and video, which increasingly plays such a major role in everybody’s personal and professional lives, held the key.

The app has taken five years to develop at a cost of around £250,000 and is simple to use, guiding users on how to create the most effective video. US-based Mr Torre has remained with the team and the company has just employed its first UK-based senior technology manager.

Mr Barry grew up in Stockton and now lives near Billingham. He spent decades working for global oil companies such as Chevron, BP and Shell. As well as Kuwait his career took him to Qatar, Iran, Brazil, Japan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Venezuela and Colombia.

Dodds Brown LLP