Narrative, Watson, and money: news of the online recruiting industry

November 1, 2016
JobBoardDoctor
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Latest News As the temperature drops and coats appear, it seems that the digital recruiting biz keeps chugging away. We’ve had some interesting developments, including Amazon’s move into job ads and Craigslist charging for the same – but I’m getting ahead of myself! First, let’s see what our friends at IBM are doing:

IBM uses Watson: IBM has been talking about using Watson, their well-known supercomputer that combines artificial intelligence (AI) and sophisticated analytical software, for recruiting. Now that talk is getting real. The system, called IRIS by Watson, uses machine learning to rank the priority of your open jobs – how hard they will be to fill. It will also rank you vis-a-vis competitors with regard to recruiting, AND it will provide ‘fitscores’ for individual candidates applying to a specific job. It does not sound elementary.
Sourced.tech raises moolah: source{d}, a Spanish startup using artificial intelligence to identify the most suitable developers for respective jobs, closed a Series A round of $6 million. source{d} was founded in 2015 by Eiso Kant, Jorge Schnura and Philip von Have; they previously founded Tyba. The money will be used to allow the continued improvement of their artificial intelligence algorithms in order to manage “one of the largest samples of data analysed by AI in the world”, as source{d} currently analyses the code for more than 6,6 million developers. Interesting.
StackOverflow gets narrative: StackOverflow, the developer-oriented Q&A site, is expanding the jobs side of its business with the launch of Developer Story, an alternative resume that offers two views: a traditional resume view for employers and a more modern timeline view; the timeline emphasizes the developer’s achievements. Good twist on the old-fashioned resume.
RecruitMilitary is acquired: Bradley-Morris, Inc., the U.S.-based military-focused recruiting firm, has acquired RecruitMilitary. The combined entity will provide employers access to more than 1,000,000 military job seekers via services that include contingency recruiting, military job fairs, employer branding, a military-based publication and more. Acqusition price was not disclosed. Impressive!
Indeed is busy: If you apply via Indeed, and land a job, Indeed will pay you $2,000 in cash. That, at least, is the premise of the Indeed Prime ad campaign now running in the U.S. In other Indeed news, they have begun offering up Spanish language support for job seekers in the U.S., as a move to provide the same experience it offers in English to those who speak Spanish. And let’s not forget Indeed Crowd – a crowdsourced recruiting platform where anyone can refer candidates to fill open roles supplied by other Indeed clients. In return, Indeed provides some cash money (up to $5K in some instances!) if the candidate submitted gets hired. Never a dull moment.
Amazon adds job postings: Amazon’s AWS cloud services division says that AWS Educate — which has been a resource library (and promotional platform) for students and educators to use AWS more — will offer free online courses and other learning modules; and alongside that, those modules would align with a new service where AWS advertises jobs from across the industry in a new AWS Educate Job Board. Placing an ad for a job on AWS Educate is completely free, as is using the site as a student or educator, a spokesperson confirmed. Very interesting.
Gild being sold?: According to Todd Raphael of ERE, Gild will be acquired by Citadel, a leading investor in the world’s major financial markets. Gild’s product and engineering teams will transition the Gild product into one that will be for Citadel internally. By August 1 of next year, Gild’s clients will no longer have access to the product. Wow.
Industry lands some cash: Industry, a job site for the hospitality sector, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding to fuel nationwide expansion, as well as product and team growth. The startup is now live in 9 cities across the West Coast — and boasts 30 percent month-over-month on both the employee and employer side of the marketplace. This space is getting crowded – in addition to Craigslist, there are ShiftGig, Movinhand, Harri, Skilld, and many others. The hospitality sector still seems hungry for more, though.
Craigslist says no free ads: Speaking of Craigslist, they have posted notices on more than 60 local sites where ads are currently free, notifying users that fees will take effect as of Nov. 1. Currently Craigslist charges in 61 U.S. markets and in Vancouver, British Columbia. In another 226 U.S. markets, it has not previously chared for job listings. According to the AIM Group, 37 sites said the fee would be $7, and another 26 said a $10 fee will be charged for each listing.
Jobandtalent chops staff: Jobandtalent has cut 18 members of its tech team and 15 from its commercial division in Madrid, reported El Espanol. The 33 jobs cut represent at least a quarter of the recruitment brand’s Spanish workforce. It has a total staff of about 350 including teams based in Colombia, Mexico and Britain. Wonder why?
HigherMe gets funding: Hiring startup HigherMe is announcing that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. The site focuses on providing businesses with employees based on what they’re really looking for — the application leads with location and available hours, includes a video cover letter and allows employers to ask any questions they want. The service has also expanding into screening.