Hmm – Fer­ret­ly, Prep­per, and Recruitroo seem to indi­cate a resur­gence in slight­ly sil­ly names in our indus­try. At least I think so. Last time around we saw news from Jobindex and this time we get some more news from them. So let’s dig into the lat­est:

• App­cast acquires Bayard: App­cast, a provider of pro­gram­mat­ic job adver­tis­ing, acquired recruit­ment mar­ket­ing firm Bayard Adver­tis­ing. The com­bined com­pa­ny will serve more than 2,000 cus­tomers across the US and 10 inter­na­tion­al mar­kets. Plans call for Bayard’s staff and oper­a­tions to inte­grate into App­cast by the end of 2023. Con­grats, every­one!
• Alma Media acquires Vrabo­tu­van­je Online: Fin­land-based media com­pa­ny Alma Media, which oper­ates a num­ber of job boards, announced its sub­sidiary Alma Career has agreed to acquire a 70% stake in Vrabo­tu­van­je Online, a North Mace­don­ian online job board. Tau Online, part of the Alma Media Group, already owns 30% of the com­pa­ny, so Vrabo­tu­van­je Online will become ful­ly owned by the Alma Media Group. Vrabo­tu­van­je Online’s net sales were €500,000 in 2022. Con­grats!
• Indeed expands PPA: Indeed is “final­iz­ing our plans for addi­tion­al mar­ket expan­sion” after rolling out pay-for-per­for­mance in France this week, fol­low­ing launch­es in the U.S., U.K. and Cana­da. Pay-per-start­ed-appli­ca­tion, a some­what dif­fer­ent pric­ing struc­ture for large employ­ers, will go live this week­end in France. It’s already rolled out in nine coun­tries — the U.S., U.K., Cana­da, Ire­land, Mex­i­co, Brazil, Italy, Aus­tralia and India. Under the new struc­tures, Indeed sets a spend­ing lim­it of 1,000 “in their local cur­ren­cy” for employ­ers who do not set a cus­tom lim­it, either high­er or low­er than 1,000 dol­lars / euros / rupees etc. I will be curi­ous to see how this is received.
• Jobindex sells its Nor­weigian site: Jobindex has sold its Nor­we­gian job site to a Finnish job site.  With the sale of Nor­we­gian Jobb­sa­fari, the Jobindex group ends its activ­i­ties in the oth­er Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries. The buy­er is Duu­n­i­tori, Fin­land’s largest recruit­ment site. Kaare Danielsen, direc­tor of Jobindex, said “At Jobindex, we have pre­vi­ous­ly decid­ed to gath­er all our efforts to devel­op the oppor­tu­ni­ties for Dan­ish job­seek­ers and com­pa­nies, so it is a win-win sit­u­a­tion. I am hap­py that Duu­n­i­tori is giv­ing the Nor­we­gian plat­form a good home and new growth.” Inter­est­ing.
• Fer­ret­ly rais­es funds: AI-pow­ered social media screen­ing SaaS start­up com­pa­ny Fer­ret­ly (what a name!) has raised $1.5 mil­lion in seed fund­ing. Fer­ret­ly does employ­ee back­ground checks for com­pa­nies, help­ing them elim­i­nate what the com­pa­ny calls, “blind spots” in hir­ing by assess­ing can­di­dates’ online per­sonas. It uses AI to help com­pa­nies align can­di­date char­ac­ter to com­pa­ny and cor­po­rate val­ues. Inter­est­ing – but I would change the name!
• Sequoia releas­es Atlas: VC firm Sequoia has released Atlas, an inter­ac­tive guide to the Euro­pean tech tal­ent land­scape. Atlas mesh­es var­i­ous qual­i­ta­tive and quan­ti­ta­tive data col­lec­tion meth­ods, includ­ing a tal­ent sur­vey of 1,035 par­tic­i­pants; a sur­vey of 125 recruiters from Euro­pean tech com­pa­nies; 17 “in-depth” inter­views with founders and recruiters; and aggre­gat­ed data from third-par­ty sources. Users can also drill down into spe­cif­ic hubs and see what the lay of the land is in terms of vol­ume of engi­neers; pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary skills; per­cent­age of female engi­neers; num­ber of accel­er­a­tors; and the “tech ecosys­tem val­ue.” Intrigu­ing.
• Adzu­na launch­es Prep­per: Adzu­na has releas­es its AI-pow­ered tool Prep­per. The tool allows job­seek­ers to pre­pare for job inter­views by gen­er­at­ing ques­tions like­ly to be asked based on infor­ma­tion from the job ad, as well as coach­ing them on how best to respond, chang­ing the game for inter­vie­wees. Based on over 10 years of labour mar­ket data, the AI tool is built on a large lan­guage mod­el (LLM), using in-built prompts to gen­er­ate and review inter­view ques­tions and mod­el answers. Inter­est­ing – but not so sure about the name on this one, either.
• Comeet merges with Spark Hire: New York City-based col­lab­o­ra­tive recruit­ment soft­ware provider Comeet is merg­ing Illi­nois-based video inter­view plat­form Spark Hire. The com­pa­nies have a com­bined client base of more than 7,000 com­pa­nies. After the merg­er, both brands will con­tin­ue to oper­ate sep­a­rate­ly. The merged enti­ty will offer a com­pre­hen­sive suite of tal­ent acqui­si­tion prod­ucts, includ­ing appli­cant track­ing, can­di­date man­age­ment and video inter­view­ing. Con­grats to both!
• Human­ly rais­es funds: Human­ly, a Seat­tle start­up that helps com­pa­nies auto­mate their recruit­ing func­tions, raised $12 mil­lion to help fuel growth of its AI-pow­ered soft­ware. The com­pa­ny is invest­ing heav­i­ly in its short mes­sage ser­vice (SMS) chat­bots that inter­act with job can­di­dates. Human­ly’s chat­bot is trained on more than three years of the com­pa­ny’s hir­ing data, help­ing it respond to spe­cif­ic ques­tions by job can­di­dates. Inter­est­ing.
• Avi­a­tion Job Search launch­es video prod­uct: Avi­a­tion Job Search has launched Cul­ture Cap­ture – cus­tom videog­ra­phy ser­vices that show­case and pro­mote an employ­er’s unique com­pa­ny cul­ture.  The ser­vice includes on-site film­ing and inter­views, b‑roll footage, pro­fes­sion­al video edit­ing and sound, and a selec­tion of long- and short-form videos. Sounds a bit like The­Muse!
• DEI hir­ing plat­form Joonko closed:  Joonko, a hir­ing plat­form focused on DEI, was shut down after  Joonko’s board of direc­tors said the com­pa­ny’s results had been man­u­fac­tured, and much of what founder and CEO Ilit Raz report­ed to them “had no basis in real­i­ty.” Joonko’s AI-dri­ven plat­form iden­ti­fied and matched suit­able can­di­dates to suit­able roles. The investors’ inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that Raz had been report­ing an inflat­ed num­ber of cus­tomers. Hmm.
• Recruitroo lands fund­ing:  Irish start-up Recruitroo raised 1 mil­lion Euros in new fund­ing. The plat­form uses AI and automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties to process all doc­u­ments and appli­ca­tions for employ­ment per­mits and visas ensur­ing com­pli­ance with legal and reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments. The team also added Andreea Wade as Chair of the Board – Wade’s recruit­ment com­pa­ny Opening.io was acquired by ICIMS in 2020, and she is cur­rent­ly VP of Prod­uct Strat­e­gy at ICIMS. Con­grats (but the name…)!
• Monster.fr pro­motes PPA: France’s Monster.fr, which intro­duced pay for per­for­mance options in 2022, is now refin­ing and pro­mot­ing its PPA options as well. Monster.fr offers an ‘Apply Start’ mod­el as well as a ‘Cost per com­plet­ed appli­ca­tion’ mod­el. These mod­els are reserved for com­pa­nies that recruit reg­u­lar­ly. For small­er busi­ness­es, they offer a clas­sic Pay-per-Click (CPC) per­for­mance mod­el. Inter­est­ing.
• Teal acquires Own­Trail: Mia­mi-based career plat­form Teal is tak­ing over Seat­tle-based social plat­form Own­Trail for an undis­closed sum. Found­ed in 2019, Teal describes itself as a “per­son­al career growth plat­form that gives you the tools, skills, and rec­om­men­da­tions you need to accel­er­ate your career, start­ing with the job search.” Own­Trail, found­ed in 2020, calls itself “the plat­form to visu­al­ize your path through life, then make that vision a real­i­ty.” It offers tools and a com­mu­ni­ty to help mid-career work­ers achieve per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al mile­stones. Con­grats!

Geez! No sum­mer slow­down this year, and the inva­sion of gen­er­a­tive AI con­tin­ues, as you can see. What’s next? More Fer­ret­ly news? I don’t know – but I’ll find out in a month!

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