While investment capital is finding its way into sexy recruiting startups focused on sourcing, AI, chatbots, and deep learning, there’s still some money out there for companies just looking to bring job seekers together with employers. Don’t call it a job board; it’s a recruitment platform.
Paris-based talent.io has just raised $8.8 million (€8 million) from existing investors Alven Capital and Ventech. This is in addition to the $2.2 million it has already raised. The company is two years old and currently operates in France, Germany, and the UK. Acquiring Webcrowd and Go Digital was part of this growth.
“We have big plans for talent.io within the burgeoning tech sector and can’t wait to take the business forward over the coming months and years,” talent.io co-founder Jonathan Azoulay said.
Talent.io will look pretty familiar to industry veterans. Engineers looking for permanent positions, freelance opportunities, or internships create a profile. Emails are then sent to employers for connections to be made. Humans are involved in the vetting process, however, so not everyone gets beyond the velvet rope. Approval is typically within 24 hours.
As we reported last November, “for hiring developers, [talent.io] 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, [talent.io] 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 also offer a reward of €500 each time a user invites another who ends up getting a job through the site. While 4,500 prospects sign up every month, only 400 of them get selected to be viewed by hiring companies. With today’s funding round, however, talent.io wants to increase these numbers by a multiple of 10. The company claims it has attracted 2,000 employers throughout Europe, mostly in France. Talent.io touts 25 percent of its candidates find employment because of their service.
“The rapid expansion of talent.io shows that our model works and proves there is an appetite for a new kind of recruitment platform based on what recruiters and candidates really need,” Azoulay said. “Traditional recruitment agencies and job boards are no longer performing as they should and our IT recruitment platform is taking more market share away from them every day. The $8.8 million investment is a vindication of our vision for recruiting in the IT sector and for the potential for talent.io not just as a new way of hiring IT staff but also as a growth business opportunity.”
For employers, signing up for the platform and contacting candidates is free. Talent.io charges a fee when companies successfully hire viewed candidates on the platform.
There are two pricing options.
- Option 1: 15 percent of the salary on the candidate’s job start date. They offer a guarantee for the first 90 calendar days following the candidate’s job start date.
- Option 2: Two percent of the candidate’s salary every month for 10 months. Should the candidate leave at any point during the 10 month, they will stop the payment.
Talent.io says employers can expect a candidate response rate of 98 percent and adds, “75 percent of hires are done in under four weeks.”
Seeing money flow into this segment of the employment space is unusual, but not surprising. Talent.io could just as easily launched 10 or 15 years ago and it wouldn’t be that newsworthy. However, the investment shows there’s still money in solutions that help employers hire technical professionals and interns. It’s not surprising that Dice is apparently being weighed down by job boards outside of this niche.
I’d also throw healthcare in with IT as well. Money is still going into traditional jobs boards — or subtle spins on the business model — that promise to fill vacancies in hospitals and healthcare roles around the world. If you’re looking to launch a Toledo-area job site, however, the money may be better spent on lottery tickets.