Seán Fay, inventor and founder of the #WholeVillageHiring™, an intelligent platform that helps companies hire more from the talent that might be IN, but not ON the market, is the first LEO Dublin City Disability Ambassador. Seán’s role as the Disability Ambassador is to help us to show others that disability need not be a barrier to running your own business.
“My background is recruitment across in-house, senior agency and co-owner of an executive search firm specialised in advanced manufacturing, consulting, technology and business process outsourcing. I have previously spotted and sought to progress new technology in its infancy. I owned a fintech firm 23 years ago. Today my company pioneers the ability to both hire and house talent with zero fees.”
Becoming Self Employed
Seán, who has founded companies in both Ireland and the UK, has always had self-employment as a goal.
“I have founded six companies in my life—three in the UK and three in Ireland. My first company was established to take a contract job with Steven Atkinson at Vodafone UK, where I led technology hiring as the first recruitment process outsourcing staff member. This company was later acquired by Rosaleen Blair, an icon and fellow dyslexic Irish entrepreneur in recruitment.
In 2002, Steven asked me if people would bank on their phones. I left my well-paid contracting job early to set up my second company, supporting Steven's venture to use Java, WAP, and SMS, enabling people to text their bank for their account balance. His business listed on AIM in 2007, but I have no regrets.
While I respect the many people working in tech, payments, and fintech today, I realised that success not aligned with my values wasn't for me. Research shows that 30% of entrepreneurs in the USA are dyslexic. Many entrepreneurs with disabilities are likely to found for-profit companies, but they still focus on creating positive change.”
Innovative Disruption & Unique Problem-Solving
“#WVH is ‘Service as Software.’ This means, in the strictest sense, #WVH is not about creating an industry but about technology ending some already existing industries. While every analyst predicts strong growth for industries like agency recruitment, executive search, recruitment process outsourcing, and relocation services, my punt is that they are all wrong, and I alone am right.
Another focus is tackling tough problems like housing in Ireland and talent mobility in the USA. Early test projects have included relocating people from the USA to India and even relocating female rocket scientists from some of the warmest parts of Europe to the highlands of Scotland. To train algorithms to do things that have never been done, you must obtain or create data that no one else has.”
Challenges and Opportunities
“Being an immigrant founder comes with some distractions, being a ‘Neuro-Divergent’ immigrant founder can compound them, particularly in Ireland where the culture is so in-direct and I am an excessively direct, fact driven person. There is a huge opportunity for tech companies in Ireland to focus on quickly achieving profitability by leveraging our FDI companies as a gateway into supply chains connected to the USA, which I believe will thrive in the coming years.
A real challenge is what I call the ‘Michael Burry’ problem. Burry, the original autistic mind, saw the US subprime triple-A as junk, recognising a flaw that everyone else had missed. Similarly, every company, lobby group and recruitment firm in Ireland claims there is a talent shortage for many Irish jobs, yet 99% of the 242 million people from the EEA/EU/UK who can be hired in Ireland without restrictions, are still to be asked about living and working here.”
Unique Insights & Opportunities
“The initial client of #WVH was a Nasdaq company. Our platform was used to undertake executive search projects that had been tried and failed by well- known indigenous US executive service companies that have led the industry since just after WWII. These projects secured critical hires, even though the client company experienced an 88% loss in share price. This journey was challenging, akin to moving from a horse to a Model T car. It did, however, enable the creation of unique insights from talent across 17 US states. From reviewing this data and comparing it to other unique #WVH insights from talent in the UK, Poland and Ireland, we realised how we could use Ireland’s existing housing capacity to hire and house talent. I will cover this some more in LEO supports as this has been a key step.”
Stand Out Moment
“As the inventor of #WVH, I created what I wanted most from the many recruitment agencies I managed at Vodafone UK while making thousands of hires per year: introducing us to the best people but letting us run our own process. Unfortunately, getting people off their horse and into a ‘Model T’ requires understanding what they used to like, such as petting the horse and giving it some sugar. This is summed up by fellow diaspora Irish dyslexic entrepreneur Henry Ford, who is often (though somewhat dubiously) quoted as saying, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
In each trial that has produced a hard-to-fix hiring outcome, it feels like hitting a bullseye. The irony is that I believe #WVH would be better used to accompany all other hiring options, not replacing them but adding to and widening the gate.”
Use Your Difference to Make a Difference
For Seán, his role as LEO Dublin City’s First Disability Ambassador is an important one. His aim is to encourage more people with disabilities to step into entrepreneurship and to reach out to their Local Enterprise Office for support in doing so.
“The dyslexic billionaire owner of the $65 million Upper East Side Manhattan Penthouse on the corner 430 E. 58th St. has commanding views. One of the things he can see right in front of him is the array of Riker Island Prisons that hold over 15,000 people. Being Neurodiverse is many, many times more likely for each prisoner looking up and the billionaire looking down. (If you want more evidence, Google "His parents re-mortgaged the family home to help pay the settlement.")
Sticking to my promise of being straight talking, Ireland has the lowest level of disability employment in the EU27, with a disability employment rate of just 32.6%, almost 20% below the EU average. So hopefully more people with any type of disability will think about using their difference to make a difference. There is too much focus on the structure of your company, whether it's 'not for profit' or otherwise. A better yardstick is the impact you make—what dent can you put in the universe, and what did you achieve in the dash between your dates.”
If you are a person with a disability who is interested in setting up your own business, please visit Self Employment Supports For People with Disabilities and contact us with any questions. We are here to support you in your entrepreneurial journey.
LEO Supports
#Whole Village Hiring was awarded a Feasibility Grant in 2023, as well as being approved for an IP Start Grant.
“Prior to engaging with LEO Dublin City, I had already built an MVP with a great tech partner in Ukraine and started selling it in the USA. Engaging with support services has always been harder for me than most, with lots of online forms, typing in boxes and an assumption that every tech company is chasing Venture Capital money. However, my experience with Cathy, my Business Advisor at the LEO, was entirely different. She was happy to review what I had created, allowed me to talk through my plans and was genuinely open to new ideas.
I have since used the Feasibility Grant to build a really detailed fixed price contract to build the first enterprise version of #WVH with a Dublin based partner. This partnership also enabled another Irish Start Up on a mission to redistribute tens of thousands of tonnes of food and offset hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2. My next set of trials will help me fund this build. Term sheets are like election polls, invoices are election results!
Plans for the Future
“I am super keen to build out the enterprise version of #WVH, to bring measurable change to things like the gender pay gap, and to challenge the ‘she does not exist’ group think. While diversity goals are a destination in themselves in many parts of Europe, I believe we need a more hard-nosed business approach. #WVH will have a wider use of gender in STEM in Ireland to reduce cost to recruit, lower housing costs and remove the unnecessary spend on work permits.
I don’t know what woke actually is, I am very focused on what works. There has been a lot of coverage about race among air pilot staff in the USA, yet the US Navy and Air Force have had more black pilots than commercial airlines since 1941 (Tuskegee Airmen). We have already used #WVH for military recruitment in the USA, and guess what? American Airlines spends over $1.1 billion on training per annum. You must see where I am going by now!”
Advice for New Entrepreneurs
“We live in a universe of failure. All the calcium in your bones and the iron in your blood were formed in a dying star that exploded long before our sun formed. The biochemistry of your creation was a 1 in 200 million event. The average age of a successful entrepreneur in the USA is 45. That being said, it can be rough, especially for those without solid support from family and loved ones, so I would give a mental health warning: keep investing in those who help you keep going.
For me, pick something you care about that others will pay to have fixed. However, be careful not to come across too much as being 'on a mission,' especially if you are in B2B enterprise sales, as it might not align with their real mission. Many companies that make the most noise about women in STEM are often the ones hiring men the most. The #WVH platform can remove work permit and housing costs and connect any company with the unique capability to hire from the 242 million people you can hire only in Ireland. It just so happens that we made this possible by supplying female talent only. So, more diversity is the tool, not the destination. It's easier to sell outcomes when they come in dollars and cents.”
Contact
E: happytoproveit@wholevillagehiring.com
T: +353 (01) 485 3113
Website
LinkedIn
If you are a person with a disability who is interested in setting up your own business, please visit Self Employment Supports For People with Disabilities and contact us with any questions. We are here to support you in your entrepreneurial journey.
