Layoffs, funding, and acquisitions: news of the recruitment marketing world

It’s 2018 – do you know where your job board is? Oh, excuse me – your ‘recruitment marketing solution’ or perhaps your ‘sourcing solution’ or…well, you get the picture. I suspect that in 2018 we will see the continuing fade-out of the ‘job board’ term. That’s fine, of course – it’s old and outmoded (not that we don’t keep such terms around elsewhere – let’s go make a Xerox, shall we?). Anyway, just because there were some holidays didn’t mean that the news stopped. So let’s take a look!:

• Shiftgig lays folks off:  Shiftgig laid off 75 workers, or about one-third of its staff, as it reorganizes the company’s sales and support operations and centralizes them in Chicago. It operates in 14 cities plans to expand to 50 cities. After the layoffs it has 130 employees. And right before Christmas, too. Ouch.
• DHI sells HealtheCareers: Dumping another vestige of their OnTarget acquisition, DHI sold HealtheCareers to Everyday Health Professional, a subsidiary of j2 Global, for approximately $15 million in cash. The transaction closed on December 4, 2017 and DHI will use the proceeds to reduce the balance on its revolving credit facility and support strategic initiatives. Seemed like a low price to me.
• Helpster raises funds: Helpster, a two-year-old startup that connects blue-collar workers with employers in Southeast Asia, has closed $2.5 million in new funding. The startup operates in Thailand and Indonesia with around 50 staff split between Bangkok and Jakarta. It aims to disrupt the temporary worker industry, which is dominated by giants like Adecco and Manpower, by vetting its workers closely and using technology — principally its mobile app — to improve the temp worker-employer relationship. So maybe recruiting funding isn’t slowing down?
• Bright Network acquires Intern Avenue:  Bright Network, the careers network founded by James Uffindell, has announced its acquisition of intern and graduate hire-matching platform Intern Avenue.  Founded in 2013, Bright Network uses data and technology to match a network of over 150,000 members with more than 250 employers. Interns continue to be a popular niche.
• Clora raises cash:  Clora, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based startup has raised its first $3.3 million seed round with the aim of helping life sciences companies hire the right talent quickly.  The startup is a platform that matches life sciences companies with on-demand expertise, claiming to complete placements about 10 times faster than traditional recruitment methods at about 30% of the cost. Not sure about the name, though – reminiscent of chlorine, eh? Or was that the point?
• Indeed goes subscription: Indeed Resume, which houses more than 100 million resumes, will adopt a subscription-based model by the turn of the year and say goodbye to its current, pay-per-contact model. Presently, employers and recruiters browse Indeed’s database of resumes for free and only pay on a per-contact basis for each candidate they contact. There are two levels of subscription: a standard sub and a professional sub. Employers and recruiters signing up for the standard subscription will have access to 30 new contacts in a month for $100 U.S.. With the professional subscription, they will get up to 100 contacts in a month for $250 U.S.. Interesting. In other Indeed news, they’ve just least 31K square feet of space in Austin. More elbow room.
• 58.com is China’s #1: 58.com CEO Michael Yao Jinbo said the 58.com ecosystem of sites is now China’s largest provider of recruitment services, in terms of total revenue and total clients. The 58.com CEO also stated that in 2017, the company’s sites received 300 million job seekers per day. The rise of 58.com has encroached on the long-standing online recruitment duopoly in China, where 51job.com and Zhaopin, both boast over 100 million users. Wow.
• Joblift raises money, too: German job search platform Joblift has raised €10 million in fresh funding led by DN Capital with participation from Picus Capital, Cherry Ventures, btov, and TruVenturo. The Berlin-based site aggregates job ads, using machine learning, from multiple sources like job boards, corporates, and recruitment firms. It currently operates in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the UK and has 1.5 million monthly site views. Because the world needs another aggregator?
• ZipRecruiter buys Jobboard.io: Jobboard.io, the job board software platform started by Christian Malpeli more than 5 years ago has been acquired by ZipRecruiter. The news came via email to JobBoard.io clients on December 13, 2017. Terms of the deal are not disclosed. Congrats, Christian!
• LiveHire raises $20M:  Recruitment platform LiveHire has just raised $20 million in an equity placement to to institutional and sophisticated investors led by Telstra Super. The Australian site has a platform which creates pools of pre-qualified job candidates for companies to dip into when they need to recruit.
• Headhunter acquires Job.ru: Russian recruitment portal HeadHunter has acquired fellow Russian job search site Job.ru. No terms were disclosed. The deal was announced during the Christmas holiday and is expected to close at the end of January. Job.ru reportedly receives around 2.24 million visitors a month. As part of the deal, HeadHunter has acquired Job.ru’s assets and trademarks and will soon begin to integrate the two portals. Looks like job boards markets everywhere are thriving.

What will 2018 bring? I’m guessing more funding, more acquisitions, more mergers, and…more start-ups! See you next time.

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