MeetFrank, Bruce, and Snag: news of the recruitment marketing industry

July 31, 2018
JobBoardDoctor
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There’s been no shortage of news over the past few weeks from companies big (Google), in between (MeetFrank), and not so big (Adzuna). Toss in a few industry conferences and you have a pretty interesting summer! Let’s see what’s happened lately:

MeetFrank lands funding: MeetFrank, aka a ‘secret’ recruitment app that uses machine learning plus a chatbot wrapper to take the strain out of passive job hunting and talent-to-vacancy matching, has closed a €1 million (~$1.1M) seed funding round to fuel market expansion in Europe. The Estonian startup was only founded last September but says it has ~125,000 active users in its first markets: Estonia, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, Lithuania, plus its most recent market addition, Germany, an expansion this seed has financed. That’s pretty decent growth!
Textio sues former customer: Textio alleges in a new lawsuit that OnGig, a former customer, abused free trial offers of the Seattle startup’s services for improving job posts to sell optimized job descriptions directly to its customers. In the lawsuit, Textio claims Ongig violated its terms of service, as well as federal and Washington state laws covering computer fraud, unfair business practices and unfair competition. Interesting.
Upwork files for an IPO: Upwork confidentially filed for an initial public offering, Recode reported, citing people familiar with the matter. However, it could still pull back its plans or get acquired instead. Upwork ranks as the largest business-focused human cloud platform with $1.36 billion in 2017 gross spend. A long way from oDesk.
Bruce (no, not the guitar guy) raises money: Bruce, a Paris-based site that matches companies with fixed-term temporary employees in real time, raised €5 million ($5.9 million U.S.) in Series A from Sofiouest and Bpifrance-managed Fonds Ambition Numérique. Rock on.
Google for Jobs rolls out in the U.K.: Google launched its job search service ‘Google Jobs’ in the UK. The artificial intelligence job search tool will show job postings from sites such as Reed, Gumtree, Guardian Jobs, Haymarket and Totaljobs.com. As it has done elsewhere, Indeed will not be listing its jobs with Google.
Goodwall garners funding: Geneva-founded professional social network for high school and college students and graduates Goodwall has secured a $10.8 million Series A funding round led by Randstad Innovation Fund and Manixer, with participation from Francis Clivaz, Zurich Cantonal Bank, and Verve Capital Partners. The social network is targeting the demographic of 14 to 24 year-olds and claims to have amassed more than 1 million users so far. It allows students and graduates to create profiles and get connected to relevant colleges and companies that offer education, internship, and employment opportunities. Good deal.
Adzuna hires ex-Indeeder: European aggregator Adzuna announced that Christopher Gamble, formerly a senior sales leader at Indeed, joined the company as Vice President of Sales for North America, effective immediately. Gamble will spearhead the organization’s US and Canadian operation, build relationships with employers, agencies and staffing firms and grow the US-based sales teams. Very interesting.
Snag gets a new leader: Former Upwork CEO Fabio Rosati has taken on the chairman and CEO roles at Snag (formerly Snagajob). A board member of Snag since 2017, Rosati assumes his new duties effective today.Rosati takes over the role from Peter Harrison, who served as CEO since 2013 and will remain with the firm in an advisory role. Rosati was CEO of Elance, which later became Upwork, from 2001 to 2015. On the road to an IPO?
Randstad up, Monster down: Randstad NV reported second-quarter revenue rose 5% on an organic basis — which excludes the impact of acquisitions, divestitures and currency. One of the company’s fastest-growing geographies was Italy where revenue rose 10% on an organic basis. In North America, revenue rose just 2% organically. Monster, however, was down 15%. Oh well.
Dice leaving the U.K. and Germany: Director of corporate communications at DHI, Rachel Ceccarelli, has confirmed the company’s tech job board, Dice, will be exiting Europe this summer. Dice sites in the UK and Germany will officially be closing on August 31, 2018. No other European countries or regions are serviced. “This was a strategic decision for DHI to focus efforts on eFinancialCareers, where we have a strong competitive opportunity to serve technology professionals in the financial services industry globally,” said Ceccarelli. Auf wiedersehen!
Codefight becomes CodeSignal: CodeFights – originally a competitive coding platform – has morphed to focus more on interview prep and helping businesses recruit developers. Thus, the service announced that it is changing its name to CodeSignal. The company also officially launched its Coding Score, a credit score-like ratings system for developers with scores that — just like today’s credit scores — range from 300 to 850. Logical move.