David González Castro defines himself as someone who has been entrepreneurship for 41 years and a quarter of a century in the digital business. It launched an email server in 1997; He had classified advertising newspapers and is the founder of the Latin American job portal Redarbor, which he runs from Barcelona. Although in Spain he is best known for being co-founder of Anuntis (now Adevinta, owner of Fotocasa or Infojobs), which he sold in 2013. “After that I had a non-compete contract, that's why I started in Latin America. I saw that there was a very important opportunity with what we had learned here and I recognize that the company has become very big.”González assures that it is the leading recruitment company in Latin America, with a presence in 21 countries, and the second group of exchanges. jobs in the world. With the recent purchase of Catho and OCC, two employment sites in Brazil and Mexico, it expects to invoice more than 100 million euros from the 53 it obtained last year. It groups 17 offices in seven countries and a team of more than 1,100 people (until now they had 600 employees). The majority of the staff is made up of programmers and salespeople. “We have been in negotiations for a year and a half, but we have achieved it. We're going to double our size. For having 11 years of life, it's not bad,” he smiles via video conference. It does not share more financial data, but the accounts deposited by the parent company in the Spanish Commercial Registry show losses of four million. “Redarbor is the leader in Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay and Guatemala,” explains the entrepreneur, who in 2022 acquired Infojobs in Brazil.
Own programs
In the gigantic bazaar of work, the company stands out with its own technology and services. Its database has 162 million candidates. “Six years ago we developed a recruiting software that uses artificial intelligence, and it is the ninth with the most clients in the world.” For González, it all starts from looking for the best fit between candidates and companies. In Mexico, for example, they manage 130,000 offers from around 25,000 companies. “If we did not use AI or machine learning we would not be good, because it allows us to save time and costs, and the results are better. We are not aware of the number of applications [de la IA] What we are going to see in the coming years.”There is a lot of literature about the benefits and bads of artificial intelligence applied to recruitment. González gives a clear example: no computer would have chosen Carlos Sainz, 62, as the winner of the last Dakar rally, as it was. So AI has to be controlled. “We owe it to our candidates, to the companies, we cannot misuse AI. We have a manifesto of respect for people.” Working in many markets also forces them to adapt to each one. “It is quite common to consider what is done in Spain and Latin America as something binary, but it is important to understand the characteristics of each place.” It also speaks of the profound changes that are to come. “The majority of traffic is produced through mobile phones, and with the entry of generation Z it will increase.” Candidates only pay for value-added products, the job search is free, their clients are the companies that They pay to find what they are looking for. “Some are very big. There are companies in Brazil that hire 8,000 people a year.” It has recently added capital to the Vitruvio fund to “grow the company, generate value and build”, but it is not considering selling the majority of the capital, for the moment. He has rope for a while, he says.