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Published 13th February, 2023
Kandidate is a London based embedded recruiter and talent sourcing company. Made up of 70 people across 12 countries, they help talent teams at fast growing companies who want to scale their talent functions.
They do this by using what’s called the ‘embedded model’ in the recruitment industry, supplying companies with dedicated sourcing partners and recruiters. Kandidate typically works with their customers for a minimum of 6 months.
One of the things that makes Kandidate different from other recruitment companies is their commercial model. They choose to charge their customers on a monthly basis instead of per hire. Working within the company and rolling out talent programs ensures they help companies find the best talent possible.
The challenge
Given Kandidate’s business model and VC relationships, they were able to stand out from the competition. But they faced some challenges with cash flow that proved difficult to solve.
According to Alex van Klaveren, CEO and Co-Founder of Kandidate, “We were spending a lot of time chasing customers and calling them for late payments”. Alex knows the biggest risk to any business is not being able to pay your bills and staff. But spending so much time trying to secure due payments simply wasn’t sustainable.
In an effort to find a better financing option, Kandidate looked at several solutions but found they were clunky, complex, and a bad deal.
A loan from the bank to smooth out any cash flow issues wasn’t an option either. Most banks in the UK are simply not set up to serve businesses with less than 10 million in revenue, Kandidate’s status at the time.
On top of that, they were “calling customers multiple times throughout the month, dedicating entire mornings to remind them to pay”. Kandidate needed a solution that tracked and reconciled all their payments so they could focus on building their business without the stress of cash flow problems or time-consuming admin.
The solution
Luckily, Two was at hand to help! Using Two, Kandidate was able to get paid upfront for their contracts instead of waiting until the end of the invoice term. In the words of Alex, “To be able to actually unlock the money from a contract is so impactful. It literally changes your business”.
Other than solving their cash flow issues, Two also saved Kandidate a huge amount of manual work. “Using Two has saved Kandidate 10 hours a week, easy. My bookkeeper would probably say 15 hours a week!” Alex says.
Freeing up time and effort that was previously dedicated to chasing payments has also allowed Kandidate to focus more on their business.
With an emphasis on employee happiness, one of Kandidate’s main goals is to not only be profitable and stable financially, but also to create a working environment in which their staff are happy.
And while this is currently very much the case for Kandidate, they aim to continue developing a company where their staff are engaged and happy to come to work every day.
As Kandidate CEO Alex van Klaveren says, “Recruitment is changing and we are at the forefront of a new model which fast growing companies are adopting”.
Two offers buy now, pay later solutions for both online and offline B2B sales. To learn how Two can help your business increase conversion rates and average order value while reducing admin, be sure to talk to one of our experts!
