As we get deep­er into Sep­tem­ber, we’re see­ing con­tin­ued pos­i­tive rev­enue growth from most – not all – job boards and recruit­ment sites, just like last time. Yes, of course com­pa­nies are still rais­ing mon­ey, and buy­ing each oth­er, and occa­sion­al­ly get­ting in trou­ble with the law (ahem, Google!).  The feel­ing I keep get­ting from talk­ing to clients, though, is: when will the oth­er shoe drop – if in fact there is anoth­er shoe? Well…I don’t know! But I am hap­py to tell you about what’s hap­pened in the past month:

• Glints gets some major cash: Glints, one of South­east Asi­a’s largest tal­ent devel­op­ment and recruit­ment plat­forms, announced today it has raised $50 mil­lion in an over­sub­scribed Series D.  Glints’ plat­form cur­rent­ly has three mil­lion pro­fes­sion­als in five mar­kets (Indone­sia, Viet­nam, Sin­ga­pore, Malaysia and Tai­wan), and 50,000 com­pa­nies that are seek­ing work­ers. The new cap­i­tal will be used to expand Glints’ tal­ent sup­ply base in the Philip­pines and employ­er demand glob­al­ly, as well as hir­ing for its prod­uct and tech teams. Con­grats!
• Poly­work is a dif­fer­ent kind of net­work: Poly­work is a ven­ture-backed start­up that is build­ing a pro­fes­sion­al net­work to help peo­ple express their mul­ti­hy­phen­at­ed work lives. In oth­er words, if you’re a reporter, who also pod­casts, wants to write a book and would love to one day help teach at a uni­ver­si­ty, Poly­work wants to give you a place to express that. The com­pa­ny announced that it has raised a $28 mil­lion in Series B fund­ing. The com­pa­ny’s ear­ly users are most­ly peo­ple who work in tech full time, look­ing to broad­en their part-time jobs as angel investors, pod­cast­ers or newslet­ter writ­ers. Very inter­est­ing.
• Pymet­rics is acquired: Dig­i­tal recruit­ment com­pa­ny Harv­er has acquired Pymet­rics, a provider of unbi­ased soft-skill work assess­ments.  Harv­er uses behav­ioral sci­ence and deep-data insights to help recruiters achieve bet­ter hir­ing out­comes. Pymet­rics uses AI behav­ioral soft-skill assess­ments to help com­pa­nies build diverse teams. Intrigu­ing.
• Job­bat­i­cal rais­es funds: Job­bat­i­cal — which spe­cial­izes in relo­cat­ing work­ers and whose busi­ness has seen an uplift in the post-pan­dem­ic work envi­ron­ments as so many work­ers become “dig­i­tal nomads” — has raised an €11.6 mil­lion fund­ing round. The com­pa­ny man­ages employ­ee relo­ca­tions, in par­tic­u­lar for high-growth tech and fin­tech com­pa­nies. Found­ed by Eston­ian entre­pre­neurs and sib­lings Karoli and Ronald Hin­driks, and Ankur Agar­w­al, Job­bat­i­cal piv­ot­ed from recruit­ment toward stream­lin­ing employ­ee relo­ca­tion and immi­gra­tion process­es. Con­grats!
• nPloy rais­es cash: Bul­gar­i­an HR tech com­pa­ny nPloy has raised €2 mil­lion in fund­ing to stream­line the process and devel­op an online plat­form that works like a dat­ing app for job seek­ers and recruit­ment teams. Cur­rent­ly, the start­up counts over 85,000 users and over 500 employ­ers, includ­ing BIC, SAP, Lidl and Post­bank. The com­pa­ny plans to expand to new mar­kets in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe with the new fund­ing, and aims to be active in about 10 more coun­tries by the end of 2023. Good luck!
• DHI feel­ing opti­mistic: DHI Group Inc., the firm behind jobs web­sites Dice and Clear­ance­Jobs, raised its rev­enue guid­ance for full-year 2022 and announced rev­enue trends for 2023. “Based on our con­tin­ued strong book­ings growth across both Dice and CJ, we are increas­ing our full-year 2022 rev­enue guid­ance and now expect total rev­enue to be in the range of $148 mil­lion to $149 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing growth of between 23% and 24% year over year,” CFO Kevin Bostick said. This is up from the com­pa­ny’s pre­vi­ous fore­cast for full-year rev­enue growth of between 21% and 23%. Things must be look­ing good, eh?
• Joonko rais­es funds: Diver­si­ty-focused rectech com­pa­ny Joonko has announced the rais­ing of a $25 mil­lion Series B round, which it will use to fuel expan­sion, grow its team and open a U.S.-based co-head­quar­ters. Described by Forbes as “the only auto­mat­ed sourc­ing plat­form focused sole­ly on under­rep­re­sent­ed can­di­dates,” Joonko builds com­plex algo­rithms, draw­ing on NLP (nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing) mod­els devel­oped in-house. Intrigu­ing.
• Boss Zhipin rev­enue drops:  Boss Zhipin, also known as Kanzhun Lim­it­ed, post­ed a 4.8% year-over-year decline in rev­enue in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2022, due to pan­dem­ic-relat­ed chal­lenges. Despite falling rev­enue, Chi­na-based Boss Zhipin record­ed RMB 107 mil­lion ($15.7 mil­lion U.S.) in net income in Q2, com­pared with a net loss in the same peri­od of last year. Offer­ing guid­ance for the third quar­ter, Boss Zhipin expects rev­enue to fall by up to 5.9% year over year, as resur­gent Covid-19 sub­dues hir­ing demand. Inter­est­ing.
• An AI That Writes Mega-Cringe LinkedIn Posts: Mar­keter Tom Orbach absolute­ly delight­ed Twit­ter when he unveiled his LinkedIn Viral Post Gen­er­a­tor, a web­site that uses AI to ape viral LinkedIn posts, cringe and all. Then he announced that his  Viral Post Gen­er­a­tor had been acquired by Taplio, a Wyoming-based adver­tis­ing agency spe­cial­ized in LinkedIn con­tent. Orbach did­n’t dis­close how much he had been paid for his tool. Well, I includ­ed this info because I know every one of my read­ers needs viral, cringey LI con­tent – so have at it!
• Diver­si­ty nudges, any­one?:  LinkedIn has added a tool to its hir­ing plat­form that pro­vides recruiters with met­rics and rec­om­men­da­tions that help them tar­get more gen­der-bal­anced can­di­date pools. “Diver­si­ty Nudges” pop up when a can­di­date search pro­duces results that are less than 45% male or female, accord­ing to a LinkedIn explain­er. The fea­ture shows the per­cent­age of the minor­i­ty gen­der and rec­om­mends loca­tion, skill, or com­pa­ny fil­ters that help bal­ance the search. Hmm.
• Sense acquires Skil­late: Sense, an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence-pow­ered plat­form for tal­ent engage­ment, acquired Skil­late, an AI recruit­ment plat­form. Skil­late’s func­tion­al­i­ty includes an AI-pow­ered match­ing engine, chat­bot screen­ing, resume pars­ing and auto­mat­ic inter­view sched­ul­ing. Last Decem­ber, Sense announced a $50 mil­lion Series D fund­ing round. The deal brought total fund­ing at the San Fran­cis­co-based com­pa­ny to $90 mil­lion. Inter­est­ing.
• Awign rais­es funds: India-based gig plat­form Awign has raised $15 mil­lion U.S. in a Series B fund­ing round. The plat­form has part­nered with over 100 com­pa­nies to con­nect gig work­ers for work order ful­fil­ment. The com­pa­nies oper­ate in indus­tries and niche ver­ti­cals such as audit­ing, dili­gence, proc­tor­ing, con­tent and data oper­a­tions, invig­i­la­tion, last-mile deliv­ery, new busi­ness devel­op­ment, and tele­call­ing. Con­grats!
• Offer­Up adds job list­ings: Offer­Up, the Seat­tle-area start­up has added job list­ings to its pop­u­lar peer-to-peer mar­ket­place with the launch of Offer­Up Jobs in the com­pa­ny’s mobile app. Offer­Up Jobs allows job seek­ers to search by key­word, fil­ter jobs by loca­tion, or browse jobs in the feed. Users can apply direct­ly from their mobile device and all inter­ac­tion or sta­tus of appli­ca­tions is han­dled by the employ­er. Inter­est­ing.
• Gojob also rais­es funds: French recruit­ment site GoJob has raised €23 mil­lion ($23 mil­lion U.S.). Found­ed in 2015, GoJob spe­cial­izes in the tem­po­rary-employ­ment mar­ket and cur­rent­ly has 500,000 users and 1,000 clients in France and the USA. The com­pa­ny, which is based in Aix and has 150 employ­ees, had rev­enue of €60 mil­lion in 2021 and is aim­ing to break €100 mil­lion this year, although it is not yet prof­itable. Hmm.

Whew! Appar­ent­ly it’s still ok for job boards to ask for mon­ey, right? Until next time – be sure to write at least one cringey LinkedIn post for the Doc­tor!

[Want to get Job Board Doc­tor posts via email? Sub­scribe here.].
[Check out the Job­Board­Geek pod­cast archive!]

Related