SmartRecruiters raises $10M to win the steep 'uphill battle' of recruiting

SmartRecruiters has raised $10 million to attempt and improve the intricate, tangled, confusing, and frustrating hiring process.

The startup’s free recruiting software makes it easier for companies to post jobs to multiple boards, websites, and social networks. SmartRecruiters’ Applicant Tracking System (ATS) tracks all job candidates, and the applications are shareable within the team to solicit feedback. It also has tools for mobile recruiting, creating branded job ads, seeking referrals, and finding passive candidates.

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The company was founded in 2010. It currently works with 50,000 customers who have created 250,000 jobs and attracted 10 million candidates to date, according to a post on the company’s blog. Founder Jerome Ternynck wrote that the labor market has become to complex. “It’s not functional anymore,” he said.

“We live in a connected world in which hiring should be easy,” he said. “There should not be such thing as a hard to fill job. It’s just a matter of distribution and management. I believe the days of Applicant Tracking are numbered. Recruiting is not about tracking. It’s about attracting and engaging top talent.”

The talent wars are raging in the tech world. Developers are in high demand, and small startups and large corporations alike battle to snag the “best” people, sometimes referred to as “unicorns.” Recruiting someone away from a prestigious company is like a badge of honor, and companies frequently cite hiring as one of their top priorities. The effort is often time-consuming and expensive. The hiring and recruiting industry spends about $9 billion on job ads, with a success rate of under 4 percent. 

Dozens of entrepreneurs have built recruiting startups to attempt and improve the process. It is a competitive field. Big companies like Monster, CareerBuilder, and Dice are established while startups like KarmaHire, Zao, GetHired, Quixey, and others take innovative approaches to hiring. Path.to was a well-known recruiting startup that closed its doors in July.  

“Unfortunately, we have learned just how hard it is to innovate in the hiring space,” Path.to’s team said in a blog post. “We’re certainly not the first startup to fight this uphill battle and lose – and likely won’t be the last.”

SmartRecruiters now has $10 million in the bank to try and succeed. Rembrandt Venture Partners led this round, with participation from Mayfield Fund which led the company’s first round of $6.5 million. Current customers include GoodData, Property Base, the Seattle Times, and Photobucket.

The company has offices in San Francisco and Krakow, Poland.