Today we’d like to introduce you to Olga Ten

Hi Olga, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?

After more than 10 years in the corporate world, I wanted to create real impact. During my corporate tenure, I discovered a unique talent for recognizing people’s strengths and recommending them to the roles they would excel in and love. One other rewarding aspect of my job was developing and conducting training, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

In 2022, combining my skills in talent recognition and training, I founded Upmarqt—an AI-powered recruitment and upskilling platform. Leveraging my corporate experience, I set out to revolutionize the recruitment process by integrating advanced AI technology, aiming to make talent acquisition more efficient and personalized. We also added the upskilling element to the platform in order to create a real human connection and enable our talent to stay competitive in the market.

Starting Upmarqt has been an incredible journey filled with learning and growth. My goal is to create opportunities for people to realize their full potential and for companies to build teams that drive success.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

It has not been a smooth road. While we haven’t had to pivot our core concept, we’ve had to fine-tune our proposition and our target audience. While our proposition resonated with our initial target audience, they were quite difficult to reach as it was a fragmented market. This process of refinement has been crucial and is now finally enabling us to gain traction. My takeaway here is, as a startup you face so many challenges that choosing the easy road is sometimes better.

Additionally, being a bootstrapped startup means we have to be very mindful of how we allocate our resources and how we find talent for Upmarqt. At the moment we are only depending on our revenue, which is not always consistent. Therefore we had to create a very lean and dynamic organisation and be very creative.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?

Upmarqt, is an innovative recruitment and upskilling platform. We specialize in matching businesses with their ideal talent while enabling that talent to stay competitive and up to date through continuous upskilling. Additionally, we support seamless talent transitions from one company to another with comprehensive job search training.

What sets Upmarqt apart is our engaged and current community of candidates, along with our unique approach. We accurately match candidates with their next project, provide necessary upskilling, and foster a supportive community. I’m particularly proud of our ability to quickly recognize and address candidates’ needs, whether it’s for upskilling or job searching.

Although we implement AI to optimize our processes and enhance user experience, we ensure it’s used judiciously. We maintain a strong emphasis on human connection through personalized training and community engagement. This balance between advanced technology and human touch is a core strength of our platform.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to focus on what I do best and get help with everything else as soon as possible. Trying to do it all yourself is overwhelming, especially the things you don’t know how to do or don’t like to do. Becoming a founder for the first time is like being thrown into water without knowing how to swim and figuring it out as you go.

So you have to make the journey as enjoyable as you possibly can. This will help you avoid burnout and enable you to deal with difficult situations better.

By focusing on my strengths and letting others handle the rest, I’ve made the founder journey a lot easier and more sustainable.

Pricing:

• Free to register as a candidate
• Course: Reboot your career. Transition from corporate to high growth. $249

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.upmarqt.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/upmarqt
• Twitter: https://www.threads.net/@upmarqt
• Other: https://olga-s-site-2c2b.thinkific.com/enroll/2996896?price_id=3854064