Jobandtalent, a start-up that matches you to a job via an app, has raised $42 million in a round led by the venture capital firm set up by the founder of Skype.
The Madrid, Spain-based firm is taking a mobile-first approach to hiring, using machine learning techniques to match people to jobs. It's specifically aimed at small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that struggle with hiring and helps deal with all the paperwork.
Jobandtalent's funding round was led by Atomico, the venture capital firm started by Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom. As part of the round, Niall Wass, a former Uber executive and current executive-in-residence at Atomico joins the board as non-executive director.
Job websites have been around for a while. LinkedIn for example suggests jobs for people based on their profiles. But Jobandtalent claims to be different as it's using machine learning – a complex algorithm that can learn about a user and get smarter – to match people to roles. And it's focused on tapping a mobile-focused crowd.
"LinkedIn was great for the highly qualified and highly skilled professionals and big corporations. It's the perfect tool for them, they have nailed it. But then when you see the rest of the labor market, you see 80 percent of the population has a lower qualification than the typical profile on LinkedIn. On the company side, you see over 70 percent of jobs generated by SMEs, and LinkedIn is not focused on that," Juan Urdiales, co-founder of Jobandtalent, told CNBC in a phone interview.
Jobandtalent is competing against a number of newer start-ups in the space which are also focused on mobile. Switch for example is billed as the Tinder for jobs, allowing users to swipe right or left on potential roles at companies. Last year it raised $2 million. And Campus Job – now renamed as Way Up – aims at matching students to jobs and raised $7.8 million last year.
Urdiales said Jobandtalent, which was founded in 2009, is different because of its machine learning capabilities and the extra services offered to businesses such as completing paperwork, including contracts. The co-founder said that when a job is posted on his platform, an average of 60 candidates are immediately matched to the job. Jobandtalent has more than 10 million users and more than 150,000 companies registered.
US expansion?
The start-up currently has a presence in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Mexico City and Bogata. Urdiales said the latest funding round will be used to double the engineering team from the current 80 as well as looking at expanding into new territories, but did not say where the expansion would be. He did however suggest the U.S. was an attractive market.
"We haven't decided yet but we will be launching in the next month in different markets," Urdiales told CNBC.
"The U.S. is an extremely attractive market for us where we believe a tool like this is totally required if you think about the changes in the labor market with much more people moving jobs, and people getting short-term jobs and millennials not wanting to spend their entire life in one company. A tool like this will be useful for a labor market like the U.S."
