A Victorian start-up that is reinventing the recruitment process has been crowned the winner of the RiverPitch grand finale.

Weploy edged out contenders Audeara, the World’s Biggest Garage Sale, Sound Scouts, Unleash Live and Neighbourlytics to win the $20,000 grand prize and the opportunity to attend London Tech Week.

“Each of the companies are solving very real-world problems,” said ACS CEO and RiverPitch judge Andrew Johnson before Weploy was announced as the winner.

“There was one that stood out for us… our framework was who is the growth hacker, who could use technology to scale the quickest.”

Weploy is a digital platform that algorithmically matches jobs with pre-vetted candidates on demand.

It focuses on helping companies hire short-term white-collar staff.

Weploy co-founder and CEO, Tony Wu, spoke with Information Age following the victory.

“The other five businesses were absolutely incredible – anyone could have won,” he said.

“That’s why for me it’s so cool, because the caliber is so high, so it’s a really awesome feeling.”

Wu explained that the success Weploy is experiencing today is a long way from its starting point.

“We were a scrappy start-up, we started literally in a bathroom,” he said.

As well as ensuring companies can get the right people into vacancies at a moment’s notice, Weploy is also leading the way in removing bias from the recruitment process.

Rather than working purely with CVs, Weploy analyses data to match candidates with companies.

And while the notion of bias in the recruitment industry is becoming increasingly spoken about, Wu points out that it is the clients who contribute to the issue just as much as recruiters.

“We’re just not scared to turn down a client,” Wu said.

“We’ve said to a client before, ‘your money isn’t good here.’

“Our sales team educates the user on why this is important, why we do it this way and that’s how we work.

“We’re very strong on our values and often in that case the client is just uneducated and once they’re educated and we get them to try us one time we change their view.”