Google backs off? I guess I was­n’t as sur­prised as some folks – but per­haps I’m just too cyn­i­cal! Still, the appar­ent retreat of the Google job ads offer­ing was only one bit of a lot of news in the job board indus­try over the past few weeks. Let’s take a look:

• Google changes its mind?: This news seems to be unof­fi­cial – but accu­rate: Google is killing its job ads pro­gram while still in Alpha. Jodie Cher­ry Roth of Recruitics spread the word on X that Google was dis­con­tin­u­ing its job ads test – and word quick­ly spread across the socials. Alexan­der Chukovs­ki spec­u­lat­ed that the explaina­tion of ‘high costs ‘ was unlike­ly – but that legal issues were prob­a­bly at the root of the deci­sion. I tend to agree. Ah, Google job ads, we hard­ly knew ye….
• Job­Can­non rais­es funds: Job­Can­non, an AI-based recruit­ing ver­ti­cal, has obtained a $500,000 invest­ment. The site was found­ed in 2022 and went on to acquire Dig­i­tal Hunters, a lead­ing Israel-based recruit­ing agency. Under­stand­ing the lim­i­ta­tions of tra­di­tion­al hir­ing meth­ods, the com­pa­ny cre­at­ed an AI to match can­di­dates and employ­ers based on spec­i­fied skills and abil­i­ties on the web­site. Con­grats!
• Indeed launch­es spe­cial­ist net­works: Indeed has ini­ti­at­ed its Spe­cial­ist Media Net­works pro­gram with its Tech Net­work, which dis­trib­utes an employ­er’s job ads across more than 50 tech­nol­o­gy-spe­cif­ic sites, such as WIRED, Ven­ture­Beat and Stack Over­flow. Employ­ers using this net­work to hire are said to receive an increase in rel­e­vant appli­ca­tions for tech roles–on aver­age, employ­ers using the Tech Net­work expe­ri­ence a 3.5x rise in rel­e­vant appli­ca­tions from skilled can­di­dates. This sounds kind of famil­iar…
• Zeit buys Good­Jobs: Ger­many-based Zeit pub­lish­ing group has acquired a major­i­ty stake in Berlin-based Good­Jobs, a recruit­ing plat­form for sus­tain­able and social jobs.  All com­pa­nies that post job offers on Good­Jobs are reviewed in advance by a com­pli­ance team to ensure that they, as well as the adver­tised posi­tions, aim “to have a pos­i­tive impact on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety and to cre­ate a future worth liv­ing.” The Zeit pub­lish­ing group already has a strong recruit­ing pres­ence in Ger­many through the job adver­tise­ments post­ed in its var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions. Inter­est­ing.
• Karriere.at takes over hok­i­fy: Karrier.at spent 40 mil­lion Euros to acquire hok­i­fy, an Aus­tri­an plat­form tar­get­ing blue-col­lar work­ers. Using the hok­i­fy pro­files on their smart­phones, job seek­ers can eas­i­ly view more than 100,000 job offers with­out being redi­rect­ed to exter­nal por­tals. Hok­i­fy is plan­ning fur­ther growth with the aim of becom­ing the largest career plat­form in the DACH region by 2030. Good luck!
• Wel­come To The Jun­gle acquires Otta: French brand­ing and recruit­ment plat­form Wel­come to the Jun­gle the acqui­si­tion of Lon­don-based job search plat­form Otta for an undis­closed amount. Wel­come to the Jun­gle, found­ed in 2015, cur­rent­ly works to increase the vis­i­bil­i­ty of 5,500 busi­ness­es to almost three mil­lion active work­ers across France and the Czech Repub­lic by enhanc­ing their employ­er brand. Otta was found­ed in 2019 and uses match­ing tech­nol­o­gy to pair its 1.7M users with rel­e­vant roles based on per­son­al pref­er­ences, skill sets and val­ues. Intrigu­ing.
• Bold.com buys FlexJobs: Bold.com, a Puer­to Rican recruit­ment tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny with a focus on resume-build­ing ser­vices, acquired FlexJobs, a job board spe­cial­iz­ing in remote gig work.  Bold.com offers CV-writ­ing ser­vices under the Live­Ca­reer, Zety and MyPer­fec­tRe­sume brands, as well as tools and ser­vices for recruiters under the MightyRe­cruiter brand. In 2021, FlexJobs acquired Job-Hunt.org, which pro­vides career advice for job seek­ers; the fol­low­ing year, it acquired recruit­ment con­sul­tan­cy Local­Wise. Con­grats!
• HireAra rais­es funds:  HRtech start­up HireAra announced that it has raised a €527,000 seed round for their AI-pow­ered can­di­date pre­sen­ta­tion plat­form for recruit­ment agen­cies. The plat­form helps recruiters to make their brand and their can­di­dates stand out to hir­ing clients, increas­ing the speed at which these can­di­dates are placed in new roles. The injec­tion of Seed fund­ing will enable HireAra to triple its sales team and bring two new con­tent prod­ucts to mar­ket in 2024. Inter­est­ing.
• LinkedIn earn­ings beat expec­ta­tions: LinkedIn beat rev­enue expec­ta­tions in its fis­cal sec­ond quar­ter end­ed Dec. 31, 2023, accord­ing to par­ent com­pa­ny Microsoft. “LinkedIn rev­enue increased 9% and 8% in con­stant cur­ren­cy, ahead of expec­ta­tions dri­ven by slight­ly bet­ter-than-expect­ed per­for­mance across all busi­ness­es,” Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said in a con­fer­ence call with ana­lysts. LinkedIn rev­enue was $4.19 bil­lion for the quar­ter. Con­grats!
• Head­hunt­able launch­es: A new tech­nol­o­gy recruit­ment web­site, Head­hunt­able, has launched based in Austin, Texas. The plat­form is an autonomous site that helps can­di­dates find secure roles at a time when there have been many redun­dan­cies in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor. The site com­bines three cru­cial ele­ments; an inti­mate knowl­edge of the tech­ni­cal mar­ket­place and its hir­ing prac­tices, the use of vir­tu­al assis­tants (Vas) who work as agents to mar­ket can­di­dates’ tal­ent to poten­tial employ­ers and mentors/coaches who can help devel­op can­di­dates’ pro­fes­sion­al skills and nav­i­gate the hir­ing process. Inter­est­ing.

An intrigu­ing wave of acqui­si­tions! A sur­prise from Google! Hmm…wonder what is com­ing next? I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.

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