The Latest from the Talent Tech Industry
March 22-28, 2021: ResumeSieve(tm) announces AI-based candidate evaluation platform; Appcast research finds that advertising jobs across a variety of sites enables employers to reach diverse candidates; ZipRecruiter introduces AI-based capability to tell job seekers how strong a match they are for openings; JobsforHumanity launches to serve black leaders, the blind, single moms, refugees, citizens returning from incarceration, and the neurodivergent; Robinhood buys a recruiting firm to add to its own internal recruiting capability; CIOs elbow their way into corporate workforce planning and management; Ginger raises $100 million in Series E funding round to become the seventh HR tech unicorn in 2021; PLUS TA Tech NewZ Makers: Kandace Miller joins Hibob; Prince Harry joins Better Up.
ResumeSieve(tm) Launches AI-based Candidate Evaluation Platform
ResumeSieve(tm) announced the launch of its innovative candidate evaluation platform, The Sieve(tm). In addition, the company is offering extended benefits for early adopters of the tool. "Small businesses need access to affordable, easy-to-use recruiting tools," said Dr. Mohan Kakar, creator and founder of ResumeSieve(tm). "We created The Sieve(tm) to reduce the time spent evaluating resumes. It was our observation that fatigue, bias and errors during the evaluation process were adversely impacting the ability for organizations to recruit the right talent. We decided to use AI based automation for evaluating resumes and providing quick insights to recruiters that would otherwise take them a significant amount of time and effort."
Recruitment Myth Busted: It's Just Not True That Only D&I Focused Job Boards Reach Diverse Candidates
Appcast, the global leader in programmatic recruitment advertising technology and services, today unveiled new data from its latest study titled, "Diversify Your Candidate Sources to Increase Diversity." Additionally, to provide hiring organizations real-time insight into diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) recruitment initiatives, Appcast announced today the general availability of its new Audience Index Report feature. Conventional wisdom suggests that diversity and inclusion focused job boards are the best sources for finding candidates from underrepresented groups. However, new Appcast research finds that by advertising jobs across a wide variety of traditional sites – even those without a primary focus on reaching candidates from underrepresented backgrounds – hiring organizations can still reach a diverse audience, particularly when the goal is racial, ethnic and gender diversity. For example, the study finds that sites within the Appcast Xcelerate network – which includes more than 10,000 job sites – reach 23% more candidates from underrepresented groups and 7% more women than the U.S. online benchmark average.
ZipRecruiter Tells Job Seekers How Strong a Match They Are for a Job
Job seekers often struggle to know whether they qualify for a job opportunity—especially when they are switching careers or when the economy is rapidly changing around them. To help job seekers prioritize where to apply, ZipRecruiter now provides them with feedback about how strong a match they are for every job. The guidance is generated using artificial intelligence algorithms trained on data from billions of employer and job seeker interactions in the ZipRecruiter marketplace. For each job, ZipRecruiter now shows job seekers a match score—either Great Match, Good Match, Fair Match, or Not a Match—which provides insight into how likely they are to be received favorably by a hiring manager for that particular job. It also provides recommendations on ways job seekers can improve their odds of success, such as by updating their profiles or resumes with more relevant qualifications.
New job site reaches out to underserved job seekers
When a financial crisis hit Lebanon in the Middle East in December 2019, former East Village, NY resident Roy Baladi felt a personal connection. As a native Lebanese who moved to the US when he was 17, the 37-year-old decided to make a tangible difference. So last March, while working for enterprise recruiting platform company SmartRecruiters, he created an online employment search site, Jobs for Lebanon. As the Lebanese started to successfully find employment through it, Baladi decided he wanted to expand the vision. The result is Jobs for Humanity, an innovative Web site that aims to ignite a global employment movement for six underserved communities: black leaders, the blind, single moms, refugees, citizens returning from incarceration, and the neurodivergent [such as those on the spectrum with autism, Asperger’s syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia and more]. Launching on March 22, the worldwide site’s goal is to “create a community of people who help one another get jobs all around the world,” said Baladi. “Einstein was on the spectrum, Richard Branson is dyslexic, Barack Obama was raised by a single mom,” said Baladi.
Robinhood buys recruiting firm Binc to double its hiring arm
Robinhood said on Monday it would buy recruiting firm Binc for an undisclosed sum, adding more than 80 employees to help the U.S. online brokerage recruit talent. "The addition of Binc will double the size of our recruiting organization, helping us rapidly scale our team to better serve our customers," Robinhood said in a statement. Robinhood has emerged as a gateway for amateur traders challenging Wall Street hedge funds and has seen a meteoric rise in volumes in recent months. Robinhood said it was actively hiring across its US offices and remote locations.
The Increase in Corporate AI Adoption During the Pandemic May Put CIOs in the Driver Seat to Roadmap Future Workforce Skills
The pandemic has increased the rate at which corporations are investing in and adopting AI driven technology; these business decisions are directionally aligned with previous capital investments to improve efficiency during downturns. The speed of adoption has now arisen as a concern. An awareness of challenges with data privacy and issues of bias in AI, have led many corporate decision-makers to advocate for greater AI regulation and government oversight. AI models will have to be retrained to keep pace with business changes, and most companies are not yet equipped to handle that level of change at speed and scale. Innovation and the evolution of work have been factors of our industrialized economy for quite some time. To meet the demands of the 4th industrial revolution, CIOs who possess an in-depth understanding of tech advancements could play a critical role in helping companies build a roadmap for future workforce needs. This role in an organization is uniquely positioned to understand the rate of technological advancement, the impact to their specific industry, and the conditions that need to exist to fully realize the benefit of the new technology.
Meet the Seventh HR Tech to Reach Unicorn in 2021
Ginger announced a $100 million Series E round of funding, bringing its total raised to $220.7 million. It also reports a valuation of $1.1 billion, making it HR technology’s latest unicorn. Ginger provides on-demand behavioral health coaching, scheduled video therapy and psychiatry sessions, and validated mental health skill-building activities via its app to employees and health plan participants. Ginger becomes the seventh work tech unicorn that we’ve tracked this year, and the third in the mental health category. Apps across the total wellbeing space have received significant attention over the last few years. Most are focused on a specific part of wellness: mental wellness, physical wellness, financial wellness, career wellness, etc. The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of mental wellness like no other wellness category and accelerated both the adoption of services and technology and VC investment in the category.
TA Tech NewZ Makers
Kandace Miller joined Hibob as Director of Global Demand Generation. Previously, she was Director of marketing at Voyager Labs.
Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales, otherwise known as Prince Harry, joined Better Up as Chief Impact Officer. Previously, he fulfilled royal duties for the House of Windsor.