A bit of what I’m hearing from the talent-acquisition startup grapevine:
- Workey, an Israeli startup, is trying to move into the U.S. market. Its algorithm looks at people’s career history, education, skills, and more, and then suggests jobs that would represent the next career step. Companies “apply to candidates” based on candidates’ anonymous profiles (anonymity in job sites being a bit of a trend these days). Workey was founded by engineers and ex-Israeli intelligence agents, and has raised $1.6 million.
- Talent.io is launching in the UK, after beginning in France and Germany. For hiring developers, it picks about 10 percent of the candidates who sign up with it each week to interact with companies during a two-week period. After those two weeks talking about salary and other topics, the company says, “if candidates are interested, both sides meet and the process goes on, with talent.io staff on hand to provide salary negotiation advice and more.” Talent.io has raised $2.2 million.
- Randrr — remember these folks who say they’re going to reinvent and revolutionize recruiting? The CEO, Terry Terhark, tells me he has 35 people now on the payroll, mostly IT employees like engineers, data scientists, and software architects. If you do the math, that’s quite unusual, at least for the talent-acquisition field: millions of dollars being spent on a company that hasn’t launched, and doesn’t have investors. Randrr has a new, custom-built office. It hasn’t posted any of its jobs, Terhark says, instead using word of mouth in Jacksonville, touting its tech stack and its mission. For job-seekers — employees, I suppose I should say, as Randrr sees its sweet spot being people who are casually looking — Randrr is mapping millions of resumes so it can learn how careers progress. Then, people will use the site to see what skills they need to get to a future job; what salary they might take if they switch jobs now on the way to that ultimate job; whether there are openings for that next step; and how their current skills might apply to a different career path. Site users, Terhark says, will help people who think: “I’ve got these skills but I have no idea how to use them.”