Everyone’s up!!: news of the job board and recruitment marketing industry

It’s time for some news about our industry, and (not surprisingly) things have been very active. It’s spring (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) and I guess the birds and the bees are also making acquisitions, raising cash, and expanding their reach – just like job boards! So let’s take a look at what’s happened lately:

• Web scraping is still legal:  Scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling. The landmark ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals is the latest in a long-running legal battle brought by LinkedIn aimed at stopping a rival company from web scraping personal information from users’ public profiles. In its second ruling on Monday, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, which governs what constitutes computer hacking under U.S. law. Sometimes the courts get it right, I guess. In other LinkedIn news, revenue rose 34% year-over-year to $3.44 billion, and the platform is seeing record engagement, Microsoft reported in announcing earnings for its fiscal third quarter ended March 31. LinkedIn’s revenue increase in constant currency was 35%. That’s a lot!
• Recruit Holdings doing just fine: Recruit Holdings’ HR division revenue reached $6.2B, and Indeed monthly visits broke 600M. The firm’s “HR technology” unit incorporates Indeed, Glassdoor, almost 35% of 51Job, the major recruitment site in China, and other units.  Revenue almost doubled post-pandemic, in just one year, to $6.2 billion. Wow.
• ZipRecruiter is also doing pretty well: ZipRecruiter reported first-quarter revenue rose 81.3% to $227.3 million, 3% above the midpoint of guidance. The job aggregator also raised its guidance for full-year 2022 revenue. However, net income fell at the Santa Monica, California-based company. ZipRecruiter forecast second-quarter revenue of $231 million to $237 million, a year-over-year increase of 28% at the midpoint. The company has a market cap of $2.10 billion. Pretty well, indeed.
• Upwork gross services volume tops $1B: Upwork reported gross services volume rose 27% year over year in the first quarter to reach $1 billion, the first time it has reached that mark. The company also spelled out the impact of war in Ukraine, saying it resulted in a loss of $1 million in the first quarter alone with a greater impact expected in the second quarter. Upwork has also donated $1 million to Direct Relief International and established a $100,000 matching program for donations from its own team to provide humanitarian support to the Ukrainian population. Cool.
• HelloWork acquires Basile: France-based recruitment group HelloWork has announced the acquisition of startup Basile, whose dedicated solution supports the implementation, animation, and management of referral programs. The deal will let the group branch into the recruitment by co-option sector. The company already operates multiple regional job sites, various tech services, and career-guidance tools such as RegionsJob, JobiJoba, CVCatcher and Diplomeo. Interesting.
• FlexJobs acquires LocalWise: FlexJobs announced that it acquired Localwise, an Oakland, California-based website that matches businesses with local talent. Localwise was founded in 2014 and has served more than 519,000 members in addition to helping 50,000 employers match with nearby talent. The acquisition is a strategic addition to FlexJobs that brings a dedicated focus on local job searching and hiring.  Congrats!
• Beamery acquires Flux:  Beamery, a talent engagement platform based in London, announced yesterday that it has acquired Flux, which offers a software product that enables companies to connect their internal talent with new internal work opportunities. Flux is based in San Francisco. Beamery said the deal will enable it to offer a “unified platform” for internal and external resourcing. Hmm.
• Zubale raises cash: After bringing in $8 million in a few rounds over the years, Zubale is back with a new cash infusion of $40 million in Series A financing led by QED Investors. The Mexico City-based company created a software and gig collaborators marketplace to solve two areas: providing retailers with workers to fulfill those orders and providing a flexible way for independent workers to earn regular income. Zubale’s operations began in Mexico and have since expanded into Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru. With this new funding, the company aims to invest in technology development, build operations in Brazil and Chile. Congrats!
• AboveBoard raises funds: AboveBoard – which has raised $6M in seed funding – aims to tweak the traditional executive recruitment model by creating a two-sided marketplace in which employers can post job listings on a platform that they know has a diverse set of candidates. AboveBoard wants to broaden how companies view the role of diverse individuals, beyond in representing the interests of their own. Hmm.
• Ringier Group revenue is up: Switzerland-based Ringier Group posted CHF 965 million ($972 million U.S.) in revenue in 2021, up 1.2% from CHF 954 million the “difficult” year before, but lower than CHF 985 million in 2019, the year prior to the onset of the pandemic. The company said its national and international marketplaces — especially the job sites — performed “significantly better” than forecast and all achieved record financial results and traffic figures. Baltic job platform CV Keskus achieved record revenue and EBITDA figures, while Profession.hu, Hungary’s leading job marketplace, posted its highest-ever EBITDA and revenue figures. Interesting.
• DHI Group revenue is up:  DHI Group Inc. reported first-quarter revenue rose 28.7% year over year with growth in both its ClearanceJobs and Dice segments. Total bookings were up 32% year over year to $50.7 million. Full-year revenue is forecast to be up by between 20% and 22% to between $144.0 million and $146.0 million. That’s a good trend.
• RedArbor revenue is up: RedArbor, the recruitment company that owns CompuTrabajo in Latin America and InfoJobs Brazil, said revenues in the financial year of 2021 (FY2021) rose 40.6%, year-over-year, to EUR 30.8 million ($32.3 million U.S.). The company expects revenues in FY2022 to grow 45% up, year-over-year, to over EUR 44 million. The revenue growth estimate is due to the good momentum built in Q1 2022. Wow.
• Grupa Pracuj revenue is up: Grupa Pracuj, the parent company of the No. 1 recruitment vertical in Poland Pracuj.pl and the leading Ukrainian job site Rabota.ua site, saw revenue increase by 58.7% and net profit by 139.2% in FY2021. Revenues from Ukraine accounted for 10.6% of the total revenues of Grupa Pracuj while the rest come mainly from the activities of Pracuj.pl and applicant tracking system ERecruiter. The company saw revenue of PLN 475.1 million ($110.6 million U.S.) in FY2021 – up from 299.3 million Polish zlotys last year. Sounds pretty good.
• Alma Career revenue is also up:  Alma Career, which houses Alma Media‘s recruitment businesses in ten countries in Eastern Central Europe, saw its revenue and adjusted EBITDA increase significantly in Q1 of FY2022. The company’s Q1 revenue amounted to €26.7 million ($28.6 million U.S.) — up 65% from €16.2 million in Q1 of FY2021. Its adjusted EBITDA increased 124.5% to €13 million ($13.9 million U.S.) from €5.8 million in the same period a year earlier. Alma runs recruitment sites Monster.fi, Jobs.cz, Prace.cz, CV Online, Profesia.sk, MojPosao.net and MojPosao.ba. Congrats!
• Chief is expanding members-only club for professional women: Chief, which recently received a $100 million investment led by Alphabet venture arm CapitalG, says it plans to open a members-only club for women this summer in San Francisco.  Chief is a membership-based company for female executives that’s designed to provide meetups with curated groups of peers, mentorship and fireside chats with people like former first lady Michelle Obama. The start-up has physical spaces in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Intriguing.
• Careers In Group acquires site:  Specialist jobs board service Careers In Group has acquired niche jobs board CareersinESG.com to add to its roster of job boards. CareersinESG.com promotes jobs in one of the U.K.’s fastest growing recruitment areas, the sustainability and ESG sector. The Careers In Group also runs CareersinAudit.com, CareersinRisk.com, CareersinCompliance, CareersinAnalytics.com and CareersinCyber.com. Congrats!
• Freelance.com grows revenue via acquisitions:  Freelance.com has posted €502 million ($532 million U.S.) in 2021 revenue, a rise of 55% from €324 million the previous year. The 2021 figure includes the company’s acquisitions Coworkees, TMC France and Helvetic Payroll, consolidated from 5 March, 1 July and 1 November 2021, respectively. It also confirmed its revenue guidance of €1 billion in the medium term. Impressive.

Kinda seems like an up market right now? Of course, what goes up does indeed come down. The question is…when? Guess we’ll just have to wait and find out! Till next time….

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