Rec Tech Insider for March 2017

Here's what's happened in the past 30 days.

ACQUIRED

• SmartRecruiters acquires Jobspotting from Germany. Read the press release.
• WayUp, an NYC based college recruiting startup has acquired Looksharp, a competitor and team of five. Read the story.

NEW LAUNCHES

• Climber.com launches personal career site service. The company’s California based career team works with clients to build the career site, so there is absolutely no programming experience needed. Detail here.
• ScoutSavvy, a local startup that is trying to help more people of diverse backgrounds find employment with tech companies in the region. Read story.
• Apply for jobs in 30 seconds without a CV? This Swedish startup helps you nail your dream job quicker. Read story.
• Noirefy, a Job Referral Platform, Aims to Fight Bias in Recruiting and Hiring. Link

MISC

• Interview with Indeed's head of tech. By any estimates, we’re looking at about a million jobs in tech — engineering, software development, design, management — that will added in the next two to five years. Read story.
• Uber employees are chatting with each other about Uber’s leadership on anonymous workplace app Blind. Read story.
• Ladders, Inc. Announces Integration with Greenhouse Software. Integration features will allow recruiters to find and source the best candidates. Press release.

FUNDING

• WorkHound, a software platform developed to help carriers reduce driver turnover, recently finished a $500,000 fundraising round to grow their business and help trucking companies around the country accelerate profitability by retaining their drivers. Press release.
• YouEarnedIt steps in. The Austin-based software as a service company encourages worker engagement through real-time digital point rewards for employee behavior that helps generate revenue or reach other workplace goals. Those digital points can then be cashed in for rewards. Now the company, founded in 2013, has closed a $6.5 million Series A funding round to ramp up product development, sales and marketing. Read story.
• WorkJam raises $12 million to communicate with hourly workers. Via Techcrunch.
• Talentoday  a talent assessment and people analytics solution, has raised $3.49 million in Series A funding mainly from The Adecco Group, the world’s leading workforce solutions provider. Press release.
• Comparably has raised additional capital needed to support the growth of its job placement service. The company revealed that it has received $7.25 million from a slew of participants, including Greycroft Partners (which led the round), Comcast Ventures, and several others. With the latest infusion of money, Comparably said it plans to further develop tools to help monitor the job market while bringing more companies on board. Read story.

What I learned at HIRE Conf

Last week in New York City at a rooftop lounge overlooking the Empire State building I had the opportunity to attend the newest entry to the recruiting and HR conference circuit. It was called HIRE Conf put on by Jeremy Roberts and his Hiring Solved compatriots. 200 or so attendees braved the cold rain of the city for the one day event.

I love one day events like this. They tend to be smaller, more intimate and better for networking. Plus it was great that they chose to come to New York where few conference organizers dare to try for fear of costs. It was nice not to have to fly in to attend for once.

The tracks presented were interesting and full of data and some very practical advice. Glen Cathey kicked it off talking about machine learning, A.I. at the intersection of recruiting. His slides had some great quotes about the future of recruiting and you can see some of them in the above slideshow of pics I took. I also enjoyed Todd Davis and his Facebook sourcing tips and tools show. 

Takeaways

• Cathey thinks in the future recruiters will do more "discovery" of candidates as the technology gets better surfacing related candidates to the skill set you need to find them for.
• Future technology will help guide recruiters to candidates they want.
• VolkScience.com can help you build custom email message templates to candidates.(currently in beta)
• Future recruiters will need to know how to leverage much more technology to be sucessful.
• The #1 job skill in 2020 will be "empathy". Something machines don't have.
• Check out Stanley Bot for Facebook Messenger.  A Facebook messenger bot that takes care of things like answering recruitment related inquiries, processing job applications, interviewing potential candidates to creating a shareable audio profile for candidates you’d want to review and share.
• Looking for a good Chrome extension to help you search Facebook profiles? Click here.
• Don't try and keyword search facebook profiles on your own, use the 3rd party tools like Net Bootcamp.
• Stat of the day: Men apply to jobs if they think they meet 60% of the requirements while women only apply to jobs where they meet ALL the requirements.
• Quote of the day: “One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”

And though I didn't get to stay for the night life it was good to reconnect with the usual suspects.

Apres theatre from #HireConf ! pic.twitter.com/fOEpp0xXS0

— Jo Weech (@JoWeech) February 8, 2017

Looks like the west coast is next, Jeremy says they are headed to San Francisco in the fall.

https://hireconf.com/

January Rec Tech Insider

The funding of new and established HR tech continues. Here's what's new inside the Rec Tech industry including a new job board for HR tech professionals.

ACQUIRED

• AuthenticJobs.com a popular niche job board has been acquired by BuySellAds a maker of ad technology. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read details.

NEW LAUNCHES

• CareerCloud launches audio jobcasts for employers. New service embeds short interviews with hiring managers into your job descriptions. Read about it.
• HR tech Talent is a job online job market for HR tech professionals and vendors. Free to post jobs or resumes. Go there.

NEW FUNDING

• Reflektive, the real-time performance feedback platform, today announced it has raised $25 million in Series B inside funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Reflektive will use the funds to expedite innovation in its consumer-style performance management and talent development suite designed for the modern workplace. Full press release.
• EmployeeChannel - Employees Can Be Reached Anytime, Anywhere via Mobile as a new employer feedback tool Raises $5M. Press release.
• Shiftgig raises 20 million. Shiftgig, a marketplace that connects U.S. employers with workers seeking short-term positions, has raised $20 million in a Series C funding round from DRW Venture Capital, FJ Labs, GGV Capital, and KDWC Ventures. Founded in 2012, Shiftgig is a mobile-first platform that harnesses the burgeoning “gig economy” by letting workers choose the shifts and days they want to work — and the employer(s) they want to work for. It’s not aimed at those seeking a career position, obviously, but those seeking flexible working arrangements will find it useful. Via VentureBeat.
• Staffjoy Raises $1.2M, Allows Employee Schedules to be Sent via Text. Staffjoy launched in 2015 with the aim of giving small businesses the technology to improve scheduling of hourly workers. Today, the company announced the next phase of its offering and shared that it has raised a $1.2 million seed round led by Caffeinated Capital. Additional participants in the latest funding round include Brainchild Holdings and Haystack Fund. Read more here.
• Namely, a Zenefits rival, raises Another $50M. HR Software Startup Namely Raises $50 Million: Namely, which aims to make human resources software more user-friendly, today announced funding of $50 million. The New York-based startup targets mid-sized companies, which typically have 100 to 1,000 employees. “A few years ago, I noticed that all mid-sized companies had one thing in common,” founder and CEO Matt Straz told VentureBeat in an interview. “They seem to really struggle with getting the data that they need to run their business.” Read more here.
• Never Eat Alone: Working inside a massive company can mean being surrounded by thousands of people every day and yet feeling isolated. How do you start to connect with colleagues who might share your interests or make good mentors?This was the feeling Marie Schneegans had a couple of years ago while interning at global bank UBS. And it was what inspired her and cofounder Paul Dupuy to launch Never Eat Alone, a Paris-based startup that helps employees connect with each other over lunch. Via VentureBeat.
• Accompany, an app that wants to be your virtual chief of staff, has raised a boatload of new cash. The company, whose app publicly debuted in August, said on Monday that it had raised $20 million in new funding. The premise for Accompany is simple: the free app wants to automatically provide you with all the information you need to prepare for meetings. Accompany connects to your Google or Microsoft email account, your mobile calendar, and Facebook and Twitter accounts. From there, the company’s algorithms parse through your personal data—as well as biographies and information listed online—to create miniature dossiers on each of your contacts. Via Fortune.
• WeFind wants to help people companies recruit their users. For, say, a media company, it could be the people who’ve signed up on the site somewhere to read something. For a clothing company, it could be people who bought something. For a travel company, perhaps people who signed up for an alert when prices dip. For Uber — well, we’re talking of millions of users — aka potential candidates. From ERE.
• Ripple Recruiting, a startup founded by Yale students to help employers recruit, target and hire top students, has raised $700,000 in a funding round. Read about them.
• MyAlerts, a Product-tracking startup closed on $2 million in funding as it expands into a market close to CEO Doug Berg's entrepreneurial roots: recruiting. Will track corporate job pages and alert users of new jobs. Read about it.

MISC

• Indeed ends free resume searches for new accounts. Details.
• Russia blocks Linkedin. Nyet! from NY Times
• Rumors Are Floating About A Cornerstone OnDemand Sale: Speculation is swirling that Los Angeles-area Cornerstone OnDemand could be up for sale; the company’s stock is up about 5 percent today and rising after hours. Among the potential buyers, are ADP, Microsoft, and Oracle Read more here.
• Jazz, the leading recruiting solutions provider for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), today announced its name change to JazzHR (www.jazzhr.com). The name change comes as part of a brand refresh initiative to better align the company's name with its growth strategy and product roadmap. More details.
• ADP Building Mobile App For Gig Workers. via WSJ - The payroll processor, which historically sells software and services to corporations, is testing a mobile app for individual temporary workers with unpredictable paychecks. The app, yet unnamed, is an attempt by ADP to reach new customers as shifts in technology, culture and demographics reshape the U.S. workforce. 
• Microsoft is getting into HCM software via ZDnet

December Rec Tech Insider

November was another busy month in the HRtech/RecTech space. Here is the roundup for what happened. Lots of new fundings, product launches and other news. See ya' next year!

NEW FUNDING

• WorkRamp an employee training platform has raised a $1.8M seed round from Susa, Haystack, others; software for customizable training at scale for any industry and position; offers performance data analytics and insights [ Link ]
• Ripple Recruiting Raises $700,000 In Funding Round Led By MongoDB And Business Insider Founder Kevin Ryan: Ripple Recruiting, a hiring platform connecting top employers with top students, has closed $700,000 in seed funding. The round will allow Ripple to continue its Ivy League expansion and grow its team as it seeks to displace much larger players in the college recruiting market. "Ripple is having exceptional success fixing a major pain-point for both companies and students," said Kevin Ryan, who has founded multiple companies including MongoDB, Business Insider, Gilt Groupe, Nomad Health, and Zola. [ Read more here. ]
• Tenstreet, the leading web-based provider of driver recruiting software and workflow solutions for the trucking and transportation industry, announced today that it has received a significant investment from Spectrum Equity, a leading growth equity firm. The investment will accelerate development of Tenstreet's product portfolio and further position the company to execute on its growth strategy. [ Link ]
• JobToday a europoean recruitment startup that matches candidates within 24 hours has raised $20 million plans to enter US market. [ Link ]
• Glint is a real-time employee engagement platform that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help companies get the most out of their employees, and now it has added another $10 million to its Series C round. The funding came from from Bessemer Venture Partners. [ Link ]
• Wurk gets $1 million to help cannabis companies manage their people with its HR software. [ Link ]
• Axonify Raises $27M to Gamify Employee Training Without Wasting Your Time: Think back to the last time you had to do a corporate training. More likely than not it was a frustrating experience that you simply tried to survive rather than learn from. (If you feel otherwise, I’m genuinely worried about you). With $27 million in fresh funding led by JMI Equity and BDC Capital, Axonify, wants to hack your brain to help everyone get away with doing less while taking away more. How little you ask? Three minutes of optional training per day, packaged up to resemble a game. [ Read more here ]

PRODUCT  LAUNCHES

• SAP announced the launch and general availability of career site builder, which brings simple, consumer-style website design, creation and management to human resource (HR) and recruiting professionals. As part of the SAP® SuccessFactors® Recruiting solution, career site builder enables the rapid deployment and easy maintenance of responsive career sites. [ Read More ]
• Google creating jobs api to help with searching for jobs. Careerbuilder, Dice are among the beta testers. This is a very 'under the hood" kind of technology that goes to the hear of a keyword search. Other job boards should take note. [ Read more ]
• Facebook about to launch jobs tab for business pages...apply by Facebook! We may soon be hearing recruiters say "apply on our Facebook page". [ Read more ]
• Placement Feed Offers New Innovative Candidate Matching Services for Staffing Firms. [ Read PR ]
• LinkedIn Launches Salary to Chart product: LinkedIn Salary, a new portal and tracker to collect and analyze salaries globally, will let users find how much a particular job earns (salary, bonus, and equity data), with the ability to drill down using parameters like years of experience, location, and education level. [ Read more here ]

MISC

• HiringSolved says they have added 82 million profiles and that we refreshed our entire database. Here’s a quick post with all of the details. [ Learn more ]
• Linkedin to offer sponsored InMails - it will be a paid feature that will let marketers query LinkedIn’s database of 476 million users and send relevant groups within it unsolicited messages in LinkedIn’s InMail messaging system. [ Learn more ]
• Triplebyte says its skills-based recruiting platform is working after screen 12,000 engineers. [ Link ]
• Randstad Locks Down the Monster Deal: Randstad Successfully Completes Tender Offer To Acquire Monster Worldwide: Randstad North America, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Randstad Holding nv (AMS: RAND), announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Merlin Global Acquisition, Inc., has successfully completed its tender offer to acquire any and all outstanding shares of common stock of Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW) ("Monster"), at a price of $3.40 per share in cash, without interest thereon and less any applicable withholding taxes (the "Offer"). As a result of the completed Offer and pending completion of the merger, which is expected to occur on November 1, 2016, Monster's common stock is expected to cease trading prior to market open on the closing date and will no longer be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. [ Read more here ]
• DHI the owner of Dice.com says site is for Sale. [ Read about it ]

Interesting reads from the HR tech landscape

Here's a short list of some news and views coming from the HR tech landscape.

THE FUTURE OF DICE: my pal Jeff Dickey Chasins writes about his former employer, the job board Dice.com and its future. Its an interesting look at whats happening to them and the "big" job sites in the market. Check out my comment at the end.

Read Full Article

TOO MANY RECRUITING TOOLS? Tim Sackett says we are forcing too many tools onto recruiters. There is certainly truth to this statement.

"We start out with a bunch of recruiters and some phones. That’s not enough we need to add some other stuff, these recruiters need tools! So, we give them email and an ATS. Then comes the job boards, postings, InMails, etc. Might as well automate background checks and references. We really need to fill the pipeline, here comes sourcing tech!

Wish we had a way to get our messages out to candidates more effectively! CRM, branding technology, data analytics, SMS messaging, etc. Just keep adding more tools! That’ll a fix it Except it doesn’t!"

Read Full Article

WHATS NEXT IN HR TECH? Too early to tell says analyst Josh Bersin. It is impossible to predict but he does have a few thoughts. "Next year I anticipate seeing more vendors here discussing wellness and work/life balance. From our data we know 45% of millennials consider a healthy work/life balance to be their top priority, so we can expect more tools based around this."

Bersin also anticipated a rise in rapid feedback software. "We used to operate a system that offered feedback once a year at appraisals. But in reality this is way too little feedback. We can expect to see a rise in tools that offer fast feedback on everything the employee does."

Read Full Article

Podcast: Jim Milton from student career platform Portfolium

Portfolium is a new student focused site that helps employers target college students and recent grads. I chatted with him by phone to get his take on the new platform, how students view the job search and what they'll be doing with their new round of venture funding.

• Website
• @Portfoliumhq on Twitter
• Funding news via TechCrunch
• @JKmilton

The RecTech Podcast is sponsored by Jobs2Careers

November RecTech Insider

It's November 1st which means it's time for another edition of the RecTech Insider. Here's a look at what made news in the past month.

NEW LAUNCHES

WhoIsHiring is a clever site that aggregates startup jobs around the world. The unique angle — a map that shows you exactly how many jobs are in a particular area. Full article.

SHRM Launches Diversity Jobs Sites for veterans, diversity and disability.  Three new specialty websites have launched within its online career center focused on creating an inclusive workforce launched with the help of Direct Employers. Full Article.

Glassdoor Releases "Know Your Worth" Beta salary tool. Do you know what you're worth in today's job market? Know Your Worth calculates your estimated value in today’s job market with the entry of a few personal characteristics - current job title, employer, current salary, location and years of relevant experience.  See it here.

GigBigWig: (startup) individuals will get the opportunity to become verified in the industry in which they plan to work. Companies will pay a fee for referrals, and job-seekers, after being screened, will be able to create a public profile to increase their digital visibility. Full article.

LocalX (startup): The majority of applicants on LaborX do not have college degrees, but are skilled in IT. LaborX features video resumes of these candidates. Based in Massachusetts. Full article.

Stack Overflow, the community site best known for providing answers for all of your random coding questions, also has a thriving jobs board and provides services to employers looking to hire developers. Today, the team is expanding the jobs side of its business with the launch of Developer Story, a new kind of resume that aims to free developers from the shackles of the traditional resume. Full article.

Facebook at Work is now Workplace, launches for all companies starting at $3 per user each month. Its the new intranet for employers. Full article.

LinkedIn debuts Open Candidate to help recruiters understand which candidates are ready to make a move. Full article.

Top HR Products of 2016 Announced at 19th Annual HR Technology Conference & Exposition - Human Resource Executive Announces Winners of Top HR Products of 2016 Awards: Human Resource Executive® magazine, the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR, recently announced the 10 winners of its Top HR Products of 2016 Awards, an annual award competition to uncover the best new HR products.  Read more here.

Gig is Another Tool for Free Lancers to Find a Job and Get Paid Quickly. The startup wants to Make It Easier for Millennials to Pick up Casual Work in Catering and Hospitality: Have we reached peak gig economy yet? Probably not, but when a startup calling itself Gig launches, we are definitely making headway. The London-based company offers a platform targeting millennials who want to pick up shift work in the hospitality and retail sectors. As well as enabling you to find and book work through the app, Gig’s headline feature is that once a shift is completed, workers automatically get paid within 24 hours. Read more here.

ACQUISITIONS

RecruitMilitary a job board and job fair provider has been acquired by staffing firm. Press Release.

Jobhuk, a recruitment marketplace based in NY has been acquired by Compunnel Software Group. Press release.

NEW FUNDING

Industry a hospitality based job board raises 2 million in new funding. Full article.

HigherMe a new hiring startup, is announcing that it has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. It’s also brought on some big names as customers, including Dunkin Donuts, Panera Bread — and most recently, fast food chain White Castle. Co-founder and CEO Rob Hunter (a past owner of multiple Marble Slab Creamery locations) has said that when employers hire hourly workers, location, availability and personality are often more important than past experience — but those things aren’t really reflected in a traditional résumé. Full article.

AnyPerk, a startup that helps companies like Salesforce and Virgin America offer their employees discounts on things like movie tickets or fitness classes, has received $11.5 million of new investment capital. Full article.

Restless Bandit, a new company from Goodman and his co-founders, is looking to give companies a way to easily find the best candidates that have already applied, rather than companies having to sift through those existing resumé piles with keywords and the like. Taking a similar approach to how LinkedIn scoured the Internet (and LinkedIn, of course) for new candidates, Restless Bandit finds the highest-potential candidates for roles with statistical modeling. The company said it has raised $8 million in a financing round from GGV Capital and Toba Capital, and it previously raised $2 million in a seed funding round. Full article.

Source{d}, a Spanish startup using AI to match developers to jobs, raises $6M. Full article.

Atipica raises 2 million to take the bias out of hiring. Article on USA Today.

Slew of HR Tech and recruiting related domains for sale

If you are looking to start a new HR tech product, job board or other recruiting service these 76 domains I was just altered to may be a good find. You can find them all listed on this webpage, below is a screenshot for what they are like.

Pics from HR Tech Expo

Last week HR Tech happened in Chicago. Here are my pics from the week.