The Startup Savants podcast tells the stories behind startups, the founders who run them, and the problems they are solving. In this episode, hosts Ethan Peyton and Annaka Voss are joined by the founder and CEO of Premier Virtual, Steve Edwards.
Premier Virtual is a SaaS startup that offers recruiting technology for businesses, school boards, and the US military by streamlining internal processes through virtual functionality. Steve is the mastermind behind one of the recruitment industry’s most advanced digital tools, a remarkable feat considering he confesses he is not a coder. Tune in to hear him talk about what it’s like to found a tech company when you’re not a geek.
From Job Fair Company to HR Tech Vendor
Steve Edwards is a small-town Wisconsinite who joined the Army right out of high school. That stint in the military played a formative role in developing his character, he says. But assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division, he soon recognized that “jumping out of airplanes … was not what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.”
Upon leaving the Army, Steve became an itinerant, traveling for four years across Florida, New Jersey, New York and Texas, putting together sales teams. His clients were the major phone carriers. Suitable candidates were discovered at job fairs and by scouring job boards. However, after four successful years in that role, Steve found himself at the other end of the enlistment process. His post became redundant; he had to find a job himself.
Steve balked at being a mere salesman: “I didn’t want to knock on doors, and I didn’t want to be in retail sales.” He thought he knew enough about how they worked to run job fairs himself and formed a partnership with an old friend to do so. The duo reached out to a New Jersey job fair company Steve had worked with in the past and got an agreement to operate under license “from the Southeast all the way out to Texas and Arizona.”
The job fairs that Steve ran for the next nine years were the conventional in-person kind. But, by 2017, with advances in communications technology progressing at a rapid pace, the writing began to appear on the wall: in-person job fairs were doomed; the unemployed were increasingly making their applications online.
Steve took heed and by December 2018 had made the decision to go with the flow by offering virtual job fairs. The early service used a generic platform with very basic features, but, says Steve, he realized “my clients wanted more.”
Accordingly, he hired a team of developers to build a proprietary platform. It had many novel functions, but clients did indeed want more. They were continually demanding new features. Adding these modifications meant that even though work on the platform had started in early 2019, eight months later the product was still evolving.
The predicament triggered an inflection point in Steve’s business aspirations. “I don’t want to put on job fairs anymore. I don’t want to host a job fair anymore. I want to now license my software so that organizations can do their own events.”
Premier was about to morph from job fair company to recruitment tech vendor.
The company landed its first client in January 2020. Two months later, the pandemic burst onto the scene. For Premier Virtual, it was a blessing in disguise. The necessity to restrict in-person interaction has made remote virtual recruitment more appealing.
“COVID was a catalyst, and it showed everybody how efficient virtual events were from a trade show aspect to a career fair aspect,” says Steve.
Premier is now considered one of the top virtual recruitment companies, named by one magazine as Innovator of the Year.
Much More Than Zoom
What makes Premier Virtual stand out as a recruiting tool?
The platform may be mistaken for simply being a Zoom alternative. But it is much more. Premier Virtual aims to recreate the same experience a job seeker would have attending a job fair in person but offers a lot more bells and whistles. Job candidates will be able to identify and discover suitable potential employers a great deal faster, tailor their resumes to suit the opening (at a job fair one general resume will have to suffice), and find out more about the company, since the platform will provide links to its website. Moreover, video interviews can be arranged and scheduled. No back and forth; no wasted time.
The system is a boon to employers, as well. It has the capability for group chats, so recruiters can address many job candidates at the same time. For both companies and candidates, the platform’s analytics are icing on the cake. For example, by using the “My Journey” feature, candidates will have access to statistics on their activities across the platform.
Product Development at Premier Virtual
Product development at Premier Virtual is an iterative process involving mockups and focus groups. The mockups, encapsulating the latest product modifications, are introduced to focus groups. Their feedback drives the creation of more mockups based on further product modifications, which are again tested in focus groups; the cycle then repeats.
Setting out to create a digital product is a trying task, even for those with computer science backgrounds. For someone like Steve, whose background was in sales and marketing, the undertaking was decidedly more challenging. He related the distressing details of finding the right developers: the misadventure through four development teams that burned a lot of cash. Allowing your tech guy to have skin in the game may avoid such pitfalls, Steve muses.
Steve had talked to a few VC firms, but in the end, he decided to fund the business himself. He stresses that getting a mentor is crucial.
When it comes to hiring, Steve says he looks for three characteristics: a positive attitude, a great work ethic, and a student mentality.
Steve aspires to be a servant leader. He wants to be more than just a boss. That human side shows to the extent that at times his staff take bets on the probability of him tearing up, when he talks about them.
By any account, Premier Virtual is a success. “In our first 16 months of business, we had over 50,000 organizations on our platform. We did over 5,000 events on our platform. And, two of the best that I love talking about, the state of Massachusetts did a statewide job fair on my platform that had 1,696 companies on there, 17,000 job seekers, over 1.3 million company booth views. Record-setting job fair that’s out there.”
Startup Savants Podcast
The Startup Savants podcast shines a spotlight on today’s startups. Tune in to hear the stories of these businesses and their maturation from idea to actuality. Hear about the forces and events that drove the founders to venture into entrepreneurship, the challenges they encountered, and the hacks they used to get out of tight spots. Hosted by Annaka Voss and Ethan Peyton, the Startup Savants podcast will pull the curtain back on the startup world. Join the hundreds of other budding entrepreneurs by tuning in.
Final Thoughts
Steve Edwards is founder and CEO of Premier Virtual, recognized as one of today’s top virtual recruitment platforms. In this candid discussion, he relates his journey from paratrooper to CEO of a software development company. Steve’s introduction to the recruitment field was a part of his sales management job. Hunting for salespeople at job fairs made him familiar with the recruitment process, giving him the conviction he could host job fairs himself. He was able to spot the trend toward greater adoption of information and communications technologies and thus began providing virtual job fairs. A giant leap forward occurred when he made the decision to pivot from job fair host to software provider. Now the Premier Virtual platform is used by hundreds of companies.
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