Jobiak launches and Indeed booms: news of the recruitment marketing industry

It’s been an interesting few weeks in the recruitment marketing industry – LinkedIn has been making moves, ZipRecruiter found some new funding, and…yes, there’s something about Jobiak. And something about AI. Let’s take a closer look:

• pymetrics raises $40M:  pymetrics, an enterprise SaaS company that uses neuroscience and AI to make the recruitment process more effective, accurate, and unbiased, announced that it closed a $40 million Series B funding round led by General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm.  The company was founded by female neuroscientists, and the Series B funding is one of the largest rounds for a female-led startup based in New York from August 2017 to August 2018, based on an analysis of Crunchbase data.  This year, the company open-sourced its algorithm bias detection tool, Audit-AI. Impressive.
• Jobiak launches: Jobiak has launched its platform for recruiters and talent acquisition teams to directly publish their jobs to Google for Jobs. Now, in just three steps, users are able to directly access candidates on Google for Jobs, accelerating candidate flow and reducing the cost and time to hire. Jobiak’s AI-based machine learning platform scans job posts, identifies the attributes that Google requires, and then structures the Google tags—all without touching the underlying code. Jobiak is from the makers of Gozaik, which was purchased by Monster. Hmm.
• Facebook adding recruitment talent: Facebook  just snatched some talent to fuel its invasion of LinkedIn’s turf. TechCrunch reported that members of coding interview practice startup Refdash including at least some of its executives have been hired to work on Facebook’s Jobs feature that lets business promote employment openings that users can instantly apply for. Looks like they’re still serious about this recruiting thing.
• Applied lands some cash: London-based startup Applied has bagged £1.5M (~$2M) in seed funding for a fresh, diversity-sensitive approach to recruitment that deconstructs and reworks the traditional CV-bound process, drawing on behavioural science to level the playing field and help employers fill vacancies with skilled candidates they might otherwise have overlooked. Applied  launched its software as a service recruitment platform in 2016, and Glazebrook says so far it’s been used by more than 55 employers to recruit candidates for more than 2,000 jobs. Anti-bias and AI continue to be hot with VCs!
• Indeed is growing again: Indeed which employs more than 900 people in Ireland, recorded a 66 per cent increase in revenues at its Irish arm last year as turnover jumped by €137.7 million to €345.7 million.  Accounts recently filed for Indeed Ireland Operations Limited reveal losses at the company narrowed slightly to €70.6 million in 2017 from €80.2 million in 2016.  The Irish subsidiary, which encompasses all the group’s activities outside North America and Asia Pacific, closed last year with a deficiency of assets of €242.3 million, as against €171.7 million in 2016. Also, U.S. and Canadian staffing firms will no longer be able to post free job ads on jobs website Indeed effective Jan. 7, but they will still be able to post sponsored ads, according to a blog post last Thursday by Matthew Lewis, director of search quality at Indeed. Well, well…
• MyJobs is acquired:  Ringier AG, a  Swiss media, e-commerce and entertainment company with presence in Myanmar and Vietnam announced that it has acquired Myanmar’s online classified job platform, MyJobs.com.mm.  As a local job portal, the company that was founded in 2012 has obtained 4,300 active listings. It claims to have nearly 1.9 million followers on social media. Interesting.
• Iziwork gets funding:  The French platform iziwork, focusing on gig work, has just completed its first fundraising: 4.5 million euros that will allow it to boost its deployment and research and development.  Iziwork’s claimed goal is to “streamline access to temporary work for the 2.5 million French temporary and freelancers by optimizing administrative management, ” explains Mehdi Tahri , co-founder of the company. Because there are gig workers everywhere, even France.
• Zip brings on the big bucks: ZipRecruiter has raised $156 million in a Series B round of funding, at a valuation in the region of $1 billion. Ian Siegel, the co-founder and CEO, said that over 100,000 businesses, and 10 million job seekers, are using ZipRecruiter: he estimates that ZipRecruiter is already accounting for about 10 percent of activity in the U.S. recruitment market, with over 5.6 million jobs listed on its app. Not bad for a ‘lifestyle’ business.
• Mai Mai goes large in career counseling:  China’s largest professional social network, Mai Mai, has announced that it will be investing one billion RMB ($144 million U.S.) in a free career counselling service. According to vice president of human resources, Ling Xiao, the plan will see the social network team up with over 1000 companies, including Fortune 500 companies operating in China such as Cisco, as well as fashion houses and media. Very interesting.
• SmartDreamers raises even more funding:  SmartDreamers, a recruitment marketing automation solution, has raised €1.2 million in a new investment round closed this October. The investment round was led by GapMinder Venture Partners, with participation Catalyst Romania. The fresh capital will be used for accelerated global growth.  Currently, the solution is being used by global companies during the recruitment marketing process in markets such as Europe, the United States, Singapore, and Australia. Automation is hot.
• GoodTimes, AI, and interviewing: GoodTime, the algorithmically enhanced interview process management platform, has raised $5 million in a new round of funding led by Bullpen Capital. The company uses natural language processing to link interview candidates with the right interviewers inside an organization. GoodTime also factors in relevant information about both an applicant and an interviewer including data like gender, ethnicity, and relevant university and previous work-history information.

Wow! Well, obviously the money is still flowing and AI continues to be the hot new thing. I suspect we will hear more in the coming months. In the meantime, enjoy your week!

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