Australian start-up RecruitLoop recently closed a $500,000 seed round, all part of their efforts to stake their banner firmly in the sands of the hiring marketplace in the US.
In case you thought that they were taking their mission of democratizing the recruitment industry lightly, well now you know, right? RecruitLoop is determined to go global.
This being the first round of funding, these bucks will be spent mainly on widening the recruiter network and reeling in new customers. Keep in mind that up until now, RecruitLoop has been funded only by revenue and an initial investment by the co-founders.
Speaking of co-founders, it all started when one Michael Overell quit his job as a McKinsey & Co analyst. Why anyone would quit such a job, you ask?
Well, Overell believed that there should be an easier, and more affordable, way to use recruiters to fill job vacancies. So with Denis Zubkov, Paul Slezak and angel investor Garry Visontay, he founded RecruitLoop in January 2011.
Fast-forward to 2013, and they have now grown to a level where they can attract a wide range of investors on board; from boutique Russian VC firm The Untitled VC to Singapore-based Microsoft executive Todd Forest.
RecruitLoop has its humble origins in Sydney’s first co-working space FishBurners but already has a network of over 75 independent recruiters across Australia, New Zealand, Dubai and the U.S. west coast. However, they have added two new staff to the team to boost their American presence.
Overell, who claims the site offers recruitment services at 10 percent of the traditional cost, recently left his native Australia for Silicon Valley to promote the platform to independent and freelance recruiters in America. The entrepreneurial version of Christopher Columbus!
“The injection of funds has allowed RecruitLoop to expand and tap into the North American market where we are gaining early momentum,” Overell said.
RecruitLoop has several tricks up its sleeve that enable it to undercut its competition, the best of these being a zero-commission model where services are instead charged by the hour.
Clients are also able to pay only for what they need, provide feedback on recruiters and video-screen candidates before deciding whether or not to take them on.
It mainly attracts recruiters and customers through the good old word-of-mouth, offering direct competition to other martketplaces such as Recruiter Exchange and KubeKonnect.
However, they cannot afford to slack even a bit because the various cashed-up software developers out there that solve specific hiring problems could easily give RecruitLoop a run for its money.
For example, just last month, U.K. firm Invenias raised $1.5 million for its Microsoft Outlook plug-in that enables recruiters to manage and view candidate data straight from the email program.
Another start-up Entelo, launched last October, raised $3.5 million for its data analysis app which crawls social networks to identify new candidates.
Recruitment platform Zao.com also raised $1.3 million last year to develop its app, which transforms employees into recruiters by leveraging social networks and gamification.
