HeyJobs, a ‘talent acquisition’ platform out of Berlin, raises $12M Series A

HeyJobs, a three year-old Berlin startup that helps large employers scale recruitment, has raised $12 million in Series A funding.

The round is led by Notion Capital, with participation from existing investors Creathor Ventures, Rocket Internet’s GFC, and newly re-branded Heartcore Capital.

Founded in 2016 and launched the following year, HeyJobs aims to tackle the recruitment problem European employers are facing due to steep declines in available workforce as the so-called the “boomer” generation nears retirement (this is seeing Germany alone losing 500,000 workers annually, apparently).

The HeyJobs platform leverages machine learning in an attempt to make high skilled recruitment more scalable. It promises to match talent with job profiles and draw in the best candidates via targeted marketing and a “personalized application and assessment flow”.

“We use a fully automated technological approach to help candidates find jobs and companies find employees,” says HeyJobs co-founder and CEO Marius Luther.

“For example, we deploy multiple machine learning algorithms to find the right potential candidates for a specific role (asking ‘who are the most likely candidates for an intensive care nurse role in East London?’). Our technology then makes sure candidates see the job proposal on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, job platforms and across the web”.

In addition, Luther says that HeyJobs’ personalized assessment ensures that the company only delivers high quality, hireable candidates to employers, something he dubs as “predictable hiring” at scale.

“Our clients are typically the talent acquisition teams of employers with high volume recruitment needs,” he explains. “In Germany, 8/10 largest employers (by headcount) are our clients. Typical industries would be logistics (i.e. DPD, UPS), retail (i.e. Vodafone) & hospitality (i.e. h-hotels, Five Guys). However our real customer is the non-academic job seeker who is looking for a job that will help him/her live a more fulfilling life — be it by being paid more, switching to better employment conditions or finding a job closer to home”.

To that end, HeyJobs says it is now serving over 500 enterprise clients including United Parcel Service, PayPal, FiveGuys, Vodafone, and Securitas. The company generates revenue via a range of business models, from subscription to per-hire success fees.

“The cost per hire is typically a fraction of what clients would pay job boards on a per-post basis or what they would pay to staffing firms on a per hire basis,” adds the HeyJobs CEO.