Gild grabs a new $13.5M because hiring engineers is still a huge pain

Despite all the coding bootcamps and the never-ending influx of developers into tech-heavy cities, recruiting tech talent still seems to be a challenge — a challenge Gild has been taking on since 2011.

And to keep on doing so, the company is announcing today that it’s raised $13.5 million as a second round of funding.

Gild’s pitch to companies is that it can help them vet and score programming candidates, and help surface the ones with the greatest merit who are most suited for a particular position. It looks at criteria such as open-source contributions, activities on comment logs, programming styles, and much more. It also pulls information such as employment history and skills from sources such as candidates’ blogs and LinkedIn profiles.

“What Gild is achieving is phenomenal: not only is it helping companies identify the right talent for a job, but it is uncovering talent that might otherwise have been filtered out by traditional biases. We are glad to partner with the Gild team as they apply brilliant data science to solve fundamental hiring problems that plague nearly every industry,” said Menlo Ventures managing director Venky Ganesan, who investing in this round, in a statement.

The company now has more than 250 customers worldwide including Gilt, Microsoft, and TripAdvisor.

“Gilt is a pioneer in both the technology and retail spaces, and it’s our incredible roster of talent that allows us to excel at both,” said Gilt vice president of talent management Mary Broadworth.

“Developers are essential to our tech success, and we’re always seeking to build our teams with the best ones to help create new and innovative ways for our members to shop each day. Gild not only helps us to find and engage some of the best tech talent in the industry, but also allows us to understand how they progress along their career paths,” she added.

The talent recruiting space is filled companies trying to solve its many problems. Some companies, such as Workable, ZipRecruiter, and Resumator, are tackling the job portal piece, while others, such as HireVue, attack the interview process. Still others, such as Hired, strive to make the marketplace more efficient on both sides.

Naturally, Gild has its own competition, namely from MindSumo, which uses online challenges and puzzles to test applicants’ skills.

Menlo Ventures led the round, with additional participation from existing investors Steve Anderson of Baseline Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners, SAP Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Mark Kvamme of Drive Capital, among others.

Gild was founded in 2011 by Luca Bonmassar and Sheeroy D. Desai, and is based in San Francisco. This new round of funding brings the company’s total to $27 million to date.