When asked Have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur? How did you get here?, Allie Knull, Founder and CEO of ResumeFree™, gave a response that we commonly hear. “I had been in the corporate world and was struggling with being fulfilled even though I had been in different industries and different organizations.”

The opportunity arose for Allie to take the leap when she was on her second maternity leave. She started her own management consulting firm focused on recruitment and HR. From there she saw what ResumeFree™ could become, so she stepped away from that company and let her second in command run it. “It was really beneficial to have someone who could step into my shoes, number one. And number two, have the ability to do that because I know that comes from a place of privilege because not all people have the opportunity to be supported while following their passion so I was very grateful.”

When asked what her tips are for people starting their own business, Allie said the following:

Make sure you are lethal at what you do and what you want to offer to people.
Do as much research as possible.
Reach out to different resources.

Allie was sent what she calls the million dollar email. It was a list of all of these different resources that she could reach out to and discuss developing her product, how to take ideas from ideation to creation, and actually getting something on the market. There were so many different resources that led her to other different resources. All it takes is just that one first step to get started.

What Is ResumeFree™?

ResumeFree™ is a screening as a service tool that matches employers and candidates on over 200 data points, not one of which is a resume. “People feel that they get lost in the shuffle and that’s not the approach we’re looking to take.”

For their purposes, resumes have no place in the screening process whatsoever. “When you think about the recruitment process, people are always trying to portray their best selves, and sometimes that can fall flat. Whereas if people do our assessment and portray their best selves, which we can actually determine, as we have a validity metric so if they try to fudge our system they get kicked out.” Allie explains that when it comes to hiring some things are non-negotiables such as a person’s name and their email address and contact information. The other information is collected in three separate buckets that collect different sets of data points. The first bucket collects their preferred location of work, their salary range, how many hours they want to work, and what type of contract they want. Contract types include: employee, intern, contractor themselves, co-op. The second bucket highlights what type of work environment they prefer to be in, how they like to solve problems, how they like to communicate, how they like to work in groups, what type of leadership style they have. And finally, the third bucket asks specific questions the employers requests that ResumeFree™ vet candidates for.

All of these data points are analyzed and then candidates are put into a top 20 list which includes a percentage of how well the candidates matched the formulas. It was really important for Allie when they were creating this to make sure it wasn’t a pass or fail system. “Popular job sites are a pass or fail, if you don’t answer their questions correctly you’re either opted out or opted in. For us, we’re gathering as much data as possible and we’re saying “hey maybe not this time but next time.” We don’t bump people out of our process, they’re still in our database, they go into the next round of hiring as long as they match within a percentage point of what we’re looking for.”

When Did You Start?

ResumeFree™ was incorporated in April of 2019 and beta testing started in August. Beta testing involves taking an idea and running it against people to see if they like it, if they don’t get it, or where you can improve but it’s not your final outcome.

“It grew from myself to an advisor, to bringing on a Chief Technology Officer, to getting quotes for developing it beyond what I call the halloween website. I call it the halloween website because it was the complete opposite of every other job board out there, they’re all blue and white and I went with orange and black. It started as me updating that website, putting up the jobs, grabbing the matches and manually going through so I put out a request to see who could develop it beyond that and that’s where AWE came in.”

AWE

She approached AWE and told us what she had to offer and after a few conversations we got the ball rolling. “The loan from AWE helped us hire some of our key staff and helped get some of our key marketing initiatives out as well.” Allie knew about AWE because there were a lot of women in her world, having come from the management consulting firm, who worked with AWE or had previously been supported by AWE, so it’s always been on her radar to utilize the support.

“The tech space is a completely different beast. Humbly I went and said ‘Please, will you support me’. I was also seeing the same people relaying the same message, they understand female entrepreneurs. They get it. From a female founder perspective, it can be difficult to go into a conversation and say ‘Hey, I’m here and I'm creating this fantastic thing’ because you still get asked ‘who else is on your ownership?’”

Going into a new space that she was wholly unfamiliar with, Allie considers herself a non-tech tech founder, she understands recruitment implicitly. But when it comes to developing the tools and the algorithms that they need to make the matching happen, that was beyond her scope. With a tech startup, the faster you get to revenue, the quicker you can grow and scale as a company. Time is actually one of those key indicators of success for a technology startup. “AWE really came to the table for that timeliness. We started chatting in January and I was funded by the end of March. It was really fast especially considering the amount of funding I was loaned. The process was meaningful as well, because it helped me to focus on how I expect the business to run, where do I expect the revenue to come in, and how many people on my team do I need right away. So it was very beneficial, it was HARD, but it was beneficial.”

Support System & Self-Care

Aside from the support from AWE, Allie has also established a support system through both a mastermind group and a group of fellow female entrepreneurs that came together after repeatedly seeing each other at networking events. “It’s an amazing quartet of individuals that do amazing things in the city. It’s very nice to check in with them and see how they’re doing or what their thoughts are on certain things. It’s been especially amazing to have this group during this pandemic time because our businesses have all been impacted by that.”

The past twelve months have been more difficult than most for everyone, especially entrepreneurs. When asked what some of her strategies are for keeping her mental wellbeing in check, Allie shared with us that for her it’s very important to have time and space to herself. “It’s a lot of go, go, go as an entrepreneur but you need to have those moments of pause. For some people that’s exercise, for me it’s short little meditations, smudging, intentional breathing and really setting the tone for the day.”

To learn more about ResumeFree™ visit their website: goresumefree.com