Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
October 2-8, 2023:
• Reinvigorating the old stuff: HiringBranch lands $2.5M to modernize legacy hiring processes;
• Passing like two ships at night: Survey finds CHROs clueless about workers’ favorite schedules;
• Overlooking half of all intelligence: Investors creating a huge gender imbalance in AI funding;
• Writing smarter job ads: SucceedSmart intros generative AI tool for improved descriptions;
• Figuring out who’s on first: When is a startup not a startup any more and why does it matter.
PLUS
If you’re looking to give your business The Big Mo – momentum in the market, attend TAtech Europe & The World Job Board Forum. Don’t miss the premier B2B conference for job boards and talent tech companies in the EMEA region! Coming up in London on December 4-6, it is the only event that’s specifically designed for company CEOs, their direct reports and rising stars and totally focused on advancing the bottom-line growth of their enterprises. So, register today and accelerate the success your company achieves, today, tomorrow and into the future!
HiringBranch Secures $2.5M to Modernize Legacy Hiring Processes
HiringBranch announced today that it has secured $2.5 million in non-dilutive funds from BDC Capital's Growth & Transition Capital division. BDC, Canada's bank for entrepreneurs, is investing in HiringBranch's mission to modernize legacy hiring processes with soft skill AI assessments that can replace interviews at scale. HiringBranch intends to use the financing to fuel growth while continuing to expand its AI capabilities. This financing was led by Nicolas Beaudet, Senior Director, Technology Group, Growth & Transition Capital, BDC Capital. "HiringBranch's solution is designed with today's world in mind. It uses technology to solve many hiring problems, which is reflected in an impressive ROI for their customers." says Beaudet. "Supporting the growth of ambitious companies like HiringBranch is exactly what our GTC team is about."
More Employees Want a 9-to-5 Schedule Than Leaders Think
There are two kinds of people in this world: splitters and blenders. Splitters prefer to have clear boundaries between their work and personal time. Blenders prefer to mix work and personal time, moving fluidly between the two throughout the day. Gallup finds that it’s about a 50/50 split between splitters and blenders among the working population. These different work styles can be a source of interpersonal conflict: Splitters may drive blenders crazy when they don’t answer work emails or phone calls outside of work hours. Blenders may drive splitters crazy when they take care of personal tasks during work hours. But the truth is that both blenders and splitters can be engaged at work and productive -- if leaders consider their work styles. [So], Gallup recently asked our roundtable of Fortune 500 CHROs which work style they thought their employees preferred. They expected only 24% of their white-collar workers to be splitters, when in fact, 45% preferred a splitter work style. When it came to production/front-line employees, CHROs thought 54% of their employees would be splitters. In reality, 62% preferred a splitter work style. In both cases, leaders overestimated the number of blenders in their organizations.
‘Urgent need’ to fix gender imbalance in AI funding
Female-founded AI companies have made up just 2% of the startup deals in the sector over the last 10 years, according to new research. Despite investors seemingly tripping over themselves to back promising AI startups, a new report from the Alan Turing Institute has found there is a stark gender imbalance among the founders receiving investment. The report found that in addition to being poorly represented across the total number of deals, female-founded AI startups also received significantly smaller average investments. According to the new research, woman-led AI startups that do secure funding receive an average investment of £1.3m, compared with their all-male counterparts receiving an average £8.6m. “The recent explosion in interest and investment in AI, especially generative AI, means that there is an urgent need for women and minorities to have equal access in the tech and venture space,” said Alan Turing Institute research fellow Dr Erin Young.
SucceedSmart Unveils Generative AI Tool for Crafting Unbiased, Accomplishment-Based Job Descriptions Within Minutes
Flawed Job Descriptions Cost Companies Top Talent and Hinder Diversity Efforts. Sound familiar? When a company recognizes the need for a new role or replacement, the process of defining that position begins. Sometimes, team members may search the internet for inspiration from various sources, resulting in a job description that combines responsibilities from multiple roles. This well-intentioned effort then reaches the hiring manager and is either posted to attract applicants or given to external firms to start the search. At the heart of the matter lies this concern: an inadequately crafted job description can introduce unintended biases. More than that, it sends everyone on a misguided hunt for talent, squandering precious time, energy, effort, and money, let alone keeping a leadership position open for longer. Enter SucceedSmart. Recognized for its AI-driven executive search platform, which matches talent based on accomplishments and experience, SucceedSmart identifies the flaws inherent in job description creation as the root of many hiring issues. To address this, SucceedSmart proudly unveils Taylor, a generative AI platform currently in Beta, designed to innovate creating and vetting job descriptions.
When Is A Startup Not A Startup Anymore? And Why Does It Matter?
Recently, I was reading Crunchbase News’ analysis of the declining volume of M&A deals involving VC-backed companies, which are still technically referred to as startups. This led me to ask myself: When we talk about startups, what do we really mean? Is a startup still a startup after it has acquired enough capital to buy another company for hundreds of millions of dollars? This notion created a dissonance for me. I invest in startups for a living, and to me, the word startups evokes images of enthusiastic founders who are working hard to get an idea off the ground — not of corporations that have a huge market capitalization. We are all aware of the tendency to call organizations startups because of the allure associated with that word. But being creative and innovative is different from being a startup. Right now, various metrics can help us determine whether a startup is still a startup. One of them — proposed by Alex Wilhelm, editor-in-chief of TechCrunch+ and previously an editor at Crunchbase News — is labeled the 50-100-500 rule. According to Wilhelm’s initial proposition, a company cannot be considered a startup if it generates revenue that exceeds $50 million, employs more than 100 people, and has a valuation of $500 million or more. In 2018, Wilhelm modified the rule. He stated that a startup ceases to be such after it reaches $100 million in revenue, has over 500 employees, or is valued at $2.5 billion or more. Wilhelm himself says we’re too liberal with the definition today, and I agree. It is hard to approve a universal criteria.
Get The Big Mo at TAtech Europe & The EMEA Job Board Forum
If you’re looking to give your business The Big Mo – momentum in the market, attend TAtech Europe & The World Job Board Forum. Don’t miss the premier B2B conference for job boards and talent tech companies in the EMEA region! Coming up in London on December 4-6, it is the only event that’s specifically designed for company CEOs, their direct reports and rising stars and totally focused on advancing the bottom-line growth of their enterprises. Whether your company is a niche or general job board, aggregator, talent marketplace, online classifieds business, programmatic platform, chatbot, conversational AI solution, ATS, recruitment marketing solution, CRM platform, interviewing or assessment system or talent technology consultancy, this event will supercharge your sales and your profits. So, register today and accelerate the success your company achieves, today, tomorrow and into the future!