VC dollars continue to flow to recruiting platforms, all of which approach the hiring problem in different ways. Their methods illustrate the difficulty of finding candidates.
Recruiting platforms have long been a leader in the HR venture capital market and this year seem to be attracting some big funding rounds.
Recruiting platform Greenhouse recently received $50 million in new funding, and Hired recently received $30 million. Earlier this year, Scout Exchange gained $100 million in funding. Applicant-tracking systems and recruiting platforms typically lead the HR market in venture capital funding, industry analysts have reported.
These platforms each approach the problem of recruiting in different ways, and their methods illustrate the complexity of filling jobs with high-quality candidates.
With its latest funding round, Greenhouse, a recruiting platform and applicant-tracking system provider, has now raised $110 million. Raising $100 million or more is not unusual for recruiting platforms.
Greenhouse believes recruiting is a companywide responsibility, and its platform is built with this approach in mind, said Daniel Chait, CEO of Greenhouse, based in New York. Recruiting "involves everyone in the company, every single day," doing all kinds of things, such as interviewing and finding candidates, he said. The Greenhouse platform uses data to help consider candidates "in a fair and objective way," and to ensure a good candidate experience, he said.
Employees don't like interviewing job candidates
Recruiting platform Greenhouse recently received $50 million in new funding, and Hired recently received $30 million. Earlier this year, Scout Exchange gained $100 million in funding.
Preparing employees to take part in candidate interviews is an important aspect of Greenhouse's platform, Chait said. It provides all the people conducting the interview with all the available information on the candidate, but also helps users develop questions to ask the candidates.
"Employees generally don't like doing interviews. They are stressful, and they don't know what questions to ask," he said.
Scout Exchange runs a marketplace recruiting platform that matches recruiters with job searches based on their expertise and "their actual track record of filling positions," said Ken Lazarus, CEO of Scout, based in Boston.
Scout enables employers to tap into one or more recruiters with the best record for filling a particular type of job, Lazarus said.
Meanwhile, Hired has a created a talent pool and the technology to help match candidates with employers. If an employer believes a candidate has the right skills, they will send an interview request to the candidate. The firm said it has raised more than $130 million to date.
Setting the right salary level
Knowing what to pay candidates helped to drive Salary.com's just-announced acquisition of Compdata Surveys & Consulting.
Salary.com gets its compensation data from surveys purchased from other providers, as well as what it gathers in its own surveys. The acquisition of Compdata, which is predominantly a survey firm, gives Salary.com the platform, analytics and the data it needs, said Alys Scott, chief marketing officer at Salary.com, based in Waltham, Mass., although the firm will still buy some third-party surveys.
The low unemployment rate and retirements of baby boomers is putting pressure on firms to have good compensation models, Scott said. The "No. 1 motivator" around retaining, attracting and engaging talent is compensation, she said.
