Curated Intel from the Talent Tech Industry
May 9-14, 2022:
• Giving a machine voice to humans: Fiverr intros AI-created voice auditions for voiceover artists;
• Growing more cautious in the tech sector: Tech layoffs and hiring freezes appear to accelerate;
• Tapping relationships to fill openings: Aliro completes Series A funding to grow its global team;
• Making remote work pay off: Deel raises funds at $12B valuation for hiring overseas workers;
• Warning of potential bias: U.S. voices concern about AI’s impact on people with disabilities.
PLUS
• If you’re in the job board, recruitment marketing, ATS, chatbot or conversational AI, CRM, assessment & interviewing or any other talent technology business, don’t miss the only conference designed specifically for you: TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum. May 31-June 2 in Austin. It’ll be the largest gathering of your peers in almost three years. And, you should be there as well!
Fiverr Introduces AI Generated Voice Auditions for Voiceover Artists
Fiverr International Ltd. (NYSE: FVRR), the company that is revolutionizing how the world works together, today announced the launch of AI Auditions, a powerful new tool allowing voiceover artists the opportunity to “audition” for roles without having to read a single sentence from a script. For customers, it provides simple, easy access to automated and personalized voiceover samples for all different types of projects. Voiceover artists on Fiverr can create their own AI voices by quickly training the Voice Auditions engine. Customers will then be able to easily tap into Fiverr’s marketplace to “sample” a voiceover artist’s voice without having to contact them first or ask them to audition. After typing a sentence or two from their script into a text box on the artist's Fiverr profile, the AI will read the language out loud, in the voiceover artist’s voice, giving them an idea of whether that person’s voice will work for their project. It’s a fast and seamless way for them to find the right artist with the right voice they are looking for.
Tech Layoffs And Hiring Freezes Appear To Accelerate
While earlier in the year, much of the talk in the tech sector focused on falling valuations, dropping stock prices and slower funding rounds, a lot of chatter the past two months has been around something that hits much closer to home for many people. Many tech companies are slowing or outright freezing hiring, while others are going a step further and laying employees off—and the pace seems to be accelerating. Just since April, companies ranging from personalized video platform Cameo to Facebook parent Meta are altering their employment plans. Cameo is reportedly cutting 80 employees—25 percent of its workforce–per The Information, while Meta is freezing hiring through the end of the year, according to Business Insider. While the exact number of layoffs in the tech sector in recent months is hard to quantify, Crunchbase data shows more is being written about layoffs this month than since the pandemic in 2020. In the week of May 2, Crunchbase recorded 43 layoff signals—news sources and articles that mentioned layoffs—the highest figure since September 2020.
Aliro Completes Series A Funding to Redefine How Companies Attract Talent
Aliro, the company improving hiring through the power of human connection, announces their Series A funding led by Sterling Partners. The investment enables Aliro to grow their team and product to stand out in a crowded HR Tech space as an effective solution to help companies reach and engage qualified job seekers with speed. Established in 2015, Aliro has been helping clients across industries cultivate diverse talent networks by leveraging relationships. Initially launched primarily as an employee referral platform, Aliro has grown to enable companies to build pools of talent through both internal and external networks. Aliro's Talent Discovery capabilities help match skilled talent, both internal and external, proactively with new opportunities to engage a diverse set of job seekers faster with less burden on talent acquisition teams. Immediately, the Aliro team has begun to grow their global leadership and engineering teams while launching a robust refresh of the brand. Aliro has signed several significant client wins in Q2 2022, and will continue to accelerate their reach with HR and Talent professionals across sectors.
Deel raises funds at $12 billion valuation
Remote hiring startup Deel has raised new venture capital funding at a $12 billion valuation, after having been valued at $5.5 billion last fall, Axios has learned from multiple sources. Why it matters: This price increase stands in stark contrast to plummeting tech valuations in the public markets. It also suggests that venture capitalists aren't anticipating major hiring slowdowns, or at least not for the sort of overseas talent in which Deel specializes. Details: The round size is $50 million. New investors include Laurene Powell Jobs' Emerson Collective, while existing company backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital and Y Combinator. San Francisco-based Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz recently disclosed that the company's annual recurring revenue rate is $100 million, with a source saying that the company's pace has since accelerated. The source adds that Deel's 2021 burn rate was "single digit millions," but is expected to increase in 2022.
U.S. warns of discrimination in using artificial intelligence to screen job candidates
The federal government said Thursday that artificial intelligence technology to screen new job candidates or monitor worker productivity can unfairly discriminate against people with disabilities, sending a warning to employers that the commonly used hiring tools could violate civil rights laws. The U.S. Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission jointly issued guidance to employers to take care before using popular algorithmic tools meant to streamline the work of evaluating employees and job prospects — but which could also potentially run afoul of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Among the examples given of popular work-related AI tools were resume scanners, employee monitoring software that ranks workers based on keystrokes, game-like online tests to assess job skills and video interviewing software that measures a person's speech patterns or facial expressions.
The Only Conference Totally Dedicated to the Talent Technology Industry
If you’re in the job board, recruitment marketing, ATS, chatbot or conversational AI, CRM, assessment & interviewing or any other talent technology business, don’t miss the only conference designed specifically for you: TAtech North America & The World Job Board Forum. May 31-June 2 in Austin. It’ll be the largest gathering of your peers in almost three years. And, you should be there as well! Speak with leading industry analysts, see some of the new products entering the market, do deal with partners and buyers, and tap into the latest research on how to build a successful tech company. You can do it all and still have time for some networking and power partying. Join us!