Buying, selling, AllyO, and My Ally: news of the recruitment marketing industry

Time flies when you’re working on survey results! It seems like just yesterday when I was rounding up the industry news – not 4 weeks ago. Not surprisingly, a lot has happened since then – including moves by My Ally, Textkernel, HireVue, and much much more. Let’s take a look:

• Textkernel gets a new owner:  Textkernel announced a change in the ownership of the company, as CareerBuilder sold its ownership in the company to the Dutch investment firm, Main Capital Partners.  CareerBuilder and Textkernel will continue to work together, and have agreed upon a longer term partnership plan and license agreement. Over the course of its 20-year history, Textkernel has focused its efforts on building best-in-class document parsing as well as semantic search and match product offerings.  Well done, folks!
• Handshake raises big bucks: Handshake, which provides a platform for college-aged students to register their interest and skills and search for suitable work, and for recruiters to search for candidates and advertise entry-level openings, has raised $80 million in a growth round of funding. Handshake  is not disclosing its valuation but a reliable source close to the startup said that the valuation has more than doubled since its last round. That was at $275 million, putting the likely valuation now between $550 million and $600 million. The company has been using its latest funding — which actually closed in November 2019 — to expand to also including community colleges in its network, and expand its virtual events services. Impressive.
• HeadHunter goes public: HeadHunter, the leading Russian recruitment vertical, is now listed on the Moscow Exchange. This is the secondary listing for the company, following its IPO on the Nasdaq in May 2019. The company is hoping that the secondary listing will allow it to attract new users and allow investors to diversify their portfolios. Interesting.
• Glassdoor launches diversity reviews: Glassdoor is now letting employees write diversity and inclusion reviews for companies in a way to make employers more transparent. Employees will be able to rate and review companies on how they treat employees based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other underrepresented groups. This rating is Glassdoor’s sixth and newest workplace factor that allows employees to rate how satisfied they are with diversity and inclusion at their current or former company, based on a five-point scale. The rating will appear alongside the five existing workplace factor ratings. Seems useful.
• GoGet lands cash:  GoGet, a Malaysian on-demand work platform, announced that it has raised a $2 million Series A led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The platform currently has 20,000 gig workers, who are called “GoGetters,” and has onboarded 5,000 businesses. Chief executive officer and co-founder Francesca Chia founded GoGet in 2014. The startup decided to focus on gig workers because there is a labor gap in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries. Interesting.
• Phenom acquires My Ally:  Phenom, a talent experience management platform, has acquired My Ally, an AI-based HR technology company. Known for its expertise in automation, My Ally reinforces Phenom’s ability to deliver an intelligent, omni-channel interview scheduling experience. The acquisition comes just eight months following Phenom’s $30 million Series C funding round. My Ally automates the scheduling of over 20,000 interviews per month, leading to a significant dataset of interactions and learnings. Intriguing.
• HireVue acquires AllyO:  HireVue, a virtual interviewing and assessments platform, announced the acquisition of AllyO (no relation to My Ally!). By automating much of the candidate engagement process using AllyO’s chat-based solutions, one 15,000-employee company achieved a 30 percent reduction in time-to-find and a 25 percent reduction in time-to-fill. Congrats, folks!
• Broadbean gets programmatic:  Broadbean Technology has launched ‘Broadbean Boost‘ – a programmatic advertising solution for employers, recruiters and hiring managers. The pay-for-performance tool allows organizations to automate job post boosting for any low-performing adverts, before the application date runs out. Logical expansion.
• SonicJobs launches in-app job search:  SonicJobs has launched a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Chatbot technology that: reads the employer’s application process for each vacancy; instead of redirecting the candidate, asks the required questions through a chatbot on the SonicJobs app; and uses these responses to complete the application automatically. Employers using SonicJobs have seen a 23% click-to-completed-apply conversion vs 4.1% click-to-completed-apply average market conversion. Impressive.
• Inclusively launches: Inclusively, a human-first employment platform built by the disability community to connect candidates with disabilities to inclusive companies and careers, has launched. The company’s proprietary job matching technology gives candidates with disabilities the power to customize their job search utilizing ‘Success Enablers’ (also known as workplace accommodations). Examples include assistive technologies (vision and hearing), telework/remote work, worksite accessibility, service/emotional support animals, modified methods, assistive services, modified work schedules, and job restructuring. Very cool.
• Workania shuts down: Alma Media subsidiary Alma Career will close down recruitment site Workania.hu and thus discontinue its operation in Hungary from November. Alma Media expected more dynamic revenue growth from Workania and that it would narrow the gap with the market leader Ringier Axel Springer’s Professia.hu. That, however, hasn’t happened despite a large marketing investment. Oh well.

Been a busy month, eh? Somehow I expect more news is coming – it always does. Remember that you can download the latest Recruiting Site Trends survey results now. Stay safe!

[Want to get Job Board Doctor posts via email? Subscribe here.].

[Check out the JobBoardGeek podcast archive!]