X is hurt­ing – ok, that’s not real­ly news. But the fact that LinkedIn is ben­e­fit­ing? Well, that is! I think it’s one sign of insta­bil­i­ty in the ad mar­ket – and of course we know that on top of that, AI will con­tribute both growth AND insta­bil­i­ty every­where, right? We’ve got a bit of each in this week’s newslet­ter – so let’s get start­ed:

• X is see­ing an exo­dus of ad dol­lars – and LinkedIn is ben­e­fit­ing: LinkedIn is see­ing a surge in demand for dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing space from brands — espe­cial­ly those look­ing to part ways with Elon Musk’s X. And it’s help­ing the com­pa­ny charge more. X is hurt­ing – there’s been a mass exo­dus of adver­tis­ers from the plat­form. Major com­pa­nies from IBM to Apple to Dis­ney have pulled ads from X  fol­low­ing reports they were being dis­played next to pro-Nazi posts and that Musk was dou­bling down on anti­se­mit­ic com­ments. LinkedIn seems to have pre­sent­ed itself as a more hos­pitable alter­na­tive, telling brands they could “work with a part­ner who respects the world you oper­ate in”. I sus­pect this goes dou­ble for X’s job ad pro­gram!
• Gig mar­ket­place Jit­jatjo rais­es $30M: Jit­jatjo, a gig mar­ket­place through which busi­ness­es can book work­ers with as lit­tle as an hour’s notice, announced that it raised $30 mil­lion in a Series B fund­ing round. The new cash, which brings Jit­jatjo’s total raised to around $65 mil­lion, will be put toward bring­ing the plat­form to new mar­kets and sup­port­ing Jit­jatjo’s go-to-mar­ket strat­e­gy, co-founder and CEO Tim Chat­field said. Jit­jatjo also offers users a ben­e­fits pack­age, Bet­ter, which pro­vides life insur­ance, acci­den­tal death and dis­mem­ber­ment insur­ance, coun­sel­ing ser­vices and pre­scrip­tion dis­counts along with mon­ey-sav­ing offers at retail. For an addi­tion­al $1 per week, work­ers can get addi­tion­al insur­ance cov­er­age, pet well­ness and road­side assis­tance through insur­ance start­up Avi­bra. Intrigu­ing.
• Funke acquires Truf­fls: Yes, you read that right! Funke Dig­i­tal, a branch of Ger­many-based Funke Media Group, has acquired the recruit­ment app Truf­fls for an undis­closed sum. The lat­ter’s 30-strong team will be trans­ferred to the Funke Works unit, where six oth­er job por­tals are already bun­dled. Found­ed in 2014, Truf­fls oper­ates like online dat­ing por­tals by enabling job-seek­ers to apply quick­ly for posi­tions by swip­ing left or right on the offers they are shown. Seems like I’ve seen this one before…
• : iHire has expand­ed its out­sourced recruit­ment ser­vices and solu­tions, pro­vid­ing full-cycle hir­ing sup­port to help busi­ness­es find qual­i­fied tal­ent effi­cient­ly and effec­tive­ly. Tai­lored to each clients’ needs, iHire’s Recruit­ment Ser­vices can han­dle all aspects of the recruit­ing process, includ­ing opti­miz­ing job ads, screen­ing can­di­dates, con­duct­ing inter­views, man­ag­ing offers, facil­i­tat­ing onboard­ing, and more. All job open­ings are adver­tised on iHire’s plat­form and with oth­er indus­try part­ners for an extra-wide reach. iHire’s team also active­ly sources pas­sive can­di­dates from its exten­sive resume data­base and oth­er sources, and even helps clients make their final deci­sion on whom to hire. Inter­est­ing.
• AI for job match­ing comes to Job­Street: Malaysia-based Job­Street is work­ing to incor­po­rate AI soft­ware devel­oped by its Aus­tralia-based par­ent com­pa­ny Seek to improve job match­ing, enhance the user expe­ri­ence and pro­vide deep­er insights into its job board. The job board will use AI to assess tal­ent sus­tain­abil­i­ty, short­list appli­ca­tions and pro­vide per­son­al­ized rec­om­men­da­tions. Accord­ing to Job­Street, this project will be com­plet­ed next year. In oth­er words, not just yet…
• Bub­ty lands fund­ing: Staff recruit­ment and man­age­ment plat­form Bub­ty announced that it had raised $1.9 mil­lion in seed fund­ing. The com­pa­ny has devel­oped AI-dri­ven tech­nol­o­gy that lets com­pa­nies move away from tra­di­tion­al third-par­ty mar­ket­places and build their own inter­nal, pri­vate tal­ent pools. Fur­ther­more, pay­ments via Bub­ty’s tech­nol­o­gy ful­ly com­ply with inter­na­tion­al reg­u­la­tions, enabling com­pa­nies in over 190 coun­tries to hire, con­tract and pay free­lancers. Inter­est­ing mod­el.
• Wel­come to the Jun­gle picks up Otta.com: France-based job board Wel­come To The Jun­gle has acquired tech recruiter Otta. Wel­come To The Jun­gle helps com­pa­nies recruit new staff by cre­at­ing can­di­date pro­files. It raised $54.0 mil­lion in a Series C fund­ing round in Jan­u­ary last year. Otta could be called a next-gen­er­a­tion job board. Intrigu­ing.
• HRtechjob launch­es: HRTechJob.com, a niche job board for HR tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als, has launched as the lat­est project from RecTech­Me­dia. The site includes curat­ed job post­ings, advanced search fil­ters, com­pa­ny pro­files, and career resources. Ven­dors can pur­chase a vari­ety of job post­ing options for a s lit­tle as $49. Job scrap­ing is avail­able. Con­grats!
• A chat­bot for free­lance project match­ing?: South Korea-based tech free­lancer mar­ket­place Wishket will intro­duce a chat­bot pow­ered by Ope­nAI’s large lan­guage mod­el GPT‑4 to improve project match­ing. The chat­bot has been trained on 50,000 project requests and 120,000 pro­fil­ers of free­lancers and devel­op­ers and will rec­om­mend projects and tech spe­cial­ists to users, accord­ing to the com­pa­ny. Wishket, which has secured KRW10 bil­lion i($7.8 mil­lion U.S.) in fund­ing to date, is cur­rent­ly beta-test­ing a job site for IT pro­fes­sion­als. Is this our future?
• Jobiqo launch­es GenAI-pow­ered con­sul­tant for job boards:  Jobiqo has launched a cus­tom gen­er­a­tive AI (GenAI) tool for job board oper­a­tors called Job Board Advi­sor. This GenAI-pow­ered con­sul­tant can help users learn more about job boards and how to effi­cient­ly launch or grow one, the com­pa­ny asserts. By using Chat­G­PT and adding its own resources, includ­ing whitepa­pers on job board strate­gies, Job Board Advi­sor has been trained to func­tion as an expert on the world of job boards, accord­ing to Jobiqo. Accord­ing to Job Board Advi­sor itself, it under­stands var­i­ous job board mod­els — tra­di­tion­al, aggre­ga­tor, hybrid, can­di­date-pay, sourc­ing site and pro­fes­sion­al net­work. Hmm….competition for the Doc­tor??

Inter­est­ing stuff, eh? Fund­ing is still out there, appar­ent­ly, and acqui­si­tions are con­tin­u­ing – not to men­tion more AI inte­gra­tions. Won­der what the com­ing month will bring?

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