Venturocket can help you get a job without even trying

Venturocket wants to help you never have to search or apply for a job again.

The San Francisco startup announced that it has raised $700,000 in its first round of funding to get rid of resumes and applications and improve the hiring process for individuals and organizations alike.

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Searching for a job sucks. It is stressful and involves endless hours of searching, tweaking resumes, writing cover letters and filling out forms. Last time I hunted for a job, I bit my nails down to little nubs (but fortunately for me, VentureBeat does not place a high premium on well-maintained fingernails). Venturocket aims to create a more efficient marketplace for jobs and talents and automate the discovery process. “Passive job seekers” create simple profiles about their skills and what they are looking for. Venturocket uses a matching algorithm to find relevant candidates for employers, who then reach out to people who interest them.

“Nobody is really stepping up and bluntly acknowledging the fundamental problem with the job space — that there is no ‘wall’ or “gateway” that disallows job seekers from applying for jobs for which they are not even qualified in the first place,” said CEO Marc Hoag to VentureBeat “This produces massive inefficiency in the market. If any other market were this inefficient, we wouldn’t even call it a market. This is something we are determined to fix. It’s not that there isn’t enough opportunity and talent: it’s that the mechanisms for connecting them are abysmally poor.””

The job search market is extremely fragmented, including old-school sites like Monster and CareerBuilder as well as newer options like Jobvite, Entelo, Kereer.me, and Whitetruffle. Hoag said Venturocket stands out because it is not a job application platform or Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Job seekers cannot apply for jobs on the site. Recruiters use Venturocket to find potential candidates and then route them through their standard application process. The business model is also unique. Job seekers are assigned a price based on market competition for their skills, and if an employer connects with a job seeker, they both pay a small connection fee of around $10. Hoag said this approach serves as a filter mechanism and creates a disincentive against dishonest job seekers.

Hoag founded the company in 2010 after attending law school, passing the California bar exam, and still struggling to find work. He saw how ineffective the current options were and set out to build a better one. The company launched in 2011 and is now focused on companies in San Francisco hiring for tech positions. The marketplace has listings from more than 600 companies. Runa Capital led this round, with participation from Talent Equity Ventures and others.