Caroline Gleeson is CEO & Co-Founder of Occupop – an award-winning Irish Startup that enables businesses to streamline the entire recruitment process on one smart recruitment solution.

Caroline Gleeson of Occupop
SNE: Hi Caroline! Can you tell us what Occupop is?
Caroline: Occupop is an AI-driven recruitment software, which simplifies the employment process for HR and Hiring Managers. We improve candidate engagement and management through an advanced step-by-step hiring process and tailored applicant tracking system.
Our technology is a cloud-based platform that:
- Analyzes real-time data on all hiring activities.
- Increases the number of direct applicants by five times.
- Dramatically reduces recruitment costs (by 50%) and time (by 78%).
- Costs are reduced through reports showing the best-performing recruitment channels.
- Time is reduced through AI technology, which shortlists the best-suited candidates.
- Connects companies instantly with job boards, social media, and their own careers page.
SNE: What inspired you to come up with the idea for Occupop?
Caroline: Occupop was founded in 2016 by myself and David Banaghan – both of us former tech recruiters. Having worked in tech recruitment for a number of years, we saw an industry where many companies failed to modernise and harness the power of technology. As a result, these businesses struggle to find talent, because of the arduous and expensive process of recruiting by traditional means.
By digitising the recruitment industry, Occopop aims to revolutionise how recruitment works, just as Airbnb, Uber, and Mytaxi have transformed other traditional industries worldwide across the world.
We now operate in Ireland, Poland, and the UK: three countries with skills shortage crises. The experience that we gained in the recruitment industry has given us a real understanding of the pain points faced by hiring managers and candidates alike and has enabled us to build recruitment solutions that address real needs and challenges in the recruiting process.
SNE: In times of COVID-19, how has your company reacted?
Caroline: We’ve done a few things:
- Webinars on Our YouTube Channel. These have been fantastic for reaching out to new and existing client companies.
- Articles on Our Website, related to COVID-19:
SNE: Occupop.com has a lot of great content. Has this helped your business in the long run?
Caroline: Definitely! We’re really passionate about people and bringing them together with the right companies, so our website has been a great way to express this and show who we are. We get a lot of enquiries from organic traffic, which are often the best enquiries of all.
SNE: Your website has some great articles about recruitment campaigns done by companies across the world. Can we list them below?
Caroline: Sure, they are: