Top 10: AI-based Recruiting software

2022. Ashby lands $21.5M to automate key aspects of recruiting



Ashby, a new recruitment platform launching out of stealth, has raised $21.5 million in equity financing. Ashby is replacing solutions from vendors like Greenhouse and Lever with algorithms — specifically scheduling and profiling algorithms. He claims that the platform uses AI to automatically find times that work for interviewers and interviewees and infer demographic data like gender and ethnicity, which clients use for aggregate analyses of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring metrics. Ashby is consolidating recruitment tools for companies with double-digit employee counts. It's automation of tasks like sourcing and scheduling are big advantages for lean recruiting teams.


2021. Turing books $87M to help source, hire and manage engineers remotely



Turing, which uses AI to source, evaluate, hire, onboard and then manage engineers remotely (including the HR and compliance aspects) in a bigger platform that it calls the “Talent Cloud”, has raised $87 million Series D. In the near future, Turing will expand into adjacent areas like project management, paving the way for an upcoming product where companies can engage entire teams on Turing, rather than individuals that are then potentially managed as teams.

2021. Dover raises $20M to bring the concept of ‘orchestration’ to recruitment



Dover, which has built what it describes as a “recruitment orchestration platform” — aimed at recruiters, has raised $20 million. Dover helps recruiters juggle and aggregate multiple candidate pools to source suitable job candidates automatically, and then manage the process of outreach (including using tools to automatically re-write job descriptions, as well as to write recruitment and rejection letters). Using AI, it taps platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed and Triplebyte — a likely list, given its initial focus on tech — to source candidates that it believes are good fits for a particular opening at a company. Dover does this with a mix of AI and understanding what a recruiter is looking for, plus any extra parameters if they have been set by the recruiter to carry this out (for example, diversity screening, if the employer would like to have a candidate pool that is in line with a company’s inclusion targets).


2021. Fetcher raises $6.5M to automate parts of the recruiting process



Fetcher, a startup that promises to make the recruiting process easier while also diversifying the candidate pool, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. Fetcher automates parts of recruiters’ jobs, namely finding job candidates and sending the initial outreach emails. Fetcher emails actually result in “a very good response rate” because they’re targeted at the right candidates. Fetcher’s approach is a “human in the loop” approach. Yes, the initial outreach is automated, but then the recruiter handles the conversations with candidates who respond. By automating both the sourcing [and] outreach sides of recruiting, Fetcher reduces the amount of time a recruiter spends in front of a computer searching for candidates, making a recruiter’s job more balanced, strategic and impactful, all while continuing to build a robust, diverse pipeline for the company.


2021. SeekOut, a profitable diverse hiring startup, has raised $65M



SeekOut, a startup that intends to help talent acquisition teams recruit “hard-to-find and diverse talent.” has raised $65M. Over the years, SeekOut has built out a database with hundreds of millions of profiles using its AI-powered talent search engine and “deep interactive analytics.” It finds talent by scouring public data and using natural-language and machine-learning technologies to understand the expertise of each candidate to build a complete 360-degree view of each potential employee. Specifically, it blends info from public profiles, GitHub, papers and patents, employee referrals, company alumni and candidates in ATS systems.


2020. Swyg raises $1.2M to use peer-interviewers and AI to reduce bias in recruitment



Swyg, a Dublin-based startup that believes it can reduce bias in recruitment by combining a peer-interview process with its own AI, has picked up $1.2 million in pre-seed funding. The overwhelming majority of job candidates want to receive feedback from their time-consuming job interviews. To solve this, the Swyg platform puts candidates through an interview process that sees them interview each other through a series of one-to-one video chats using pre-defined structured questions. The peer-to-peer process draws on the expertise of a diverse group of individuals instead of relying on a single recruiter or hiring manager


2020. Mya Systems gets $18.75M to keep scaling its recruitment chatbot



Hiring chatbot Mya Systems — which uses a conversational AI to grease the recruitment pipeline by automating sourcing for agencies and large enterprises needing to fill lots of vacancies in areas such as retail and warehouse jobs — has closed an $18.75 million Series C. Its chatbot approach to engaging and “deeply” screening applicants via a mobile app has led to more than 400,000 interviews being scheduled with “qualified and interested” candidates, it added. In addition to conversational AI, Mya has focused on integrating its platform with other tools used for recruitment, including CRM, ATS and HRIS systems — plugging into the likes of Bullhorn, Workday, and SAP SuccessFactors.


2019. Zoho Recruit got AI assistant



Zoho unveiled the new version of its recruiting software Zoho Recruit. It brings AI assistant Zia to play. She understands candidates as humans with career profiles instead of a string of keywords on their resume. This enables her to find the best candidate for a job opening by matching their experiences, skills, and proficiencies with the job’s requirements and grading them accordingly. Also Zoho Recruit added Vendor Portal that allows recruiters to invite third-party recruitment agencies to submit candidates for your open jobs into your database for processing. You can also provide them with a self-service log and enable them to track the progress of the candidates they’ve submitted.


2018. Workday acquired AI-HR-startup Rallyteam



Workday acquired Rallyteam,  startup that helps companies keep talented employees by matching them with more challenging opportunities in-house. Workday wants to take the Rallyteam team and incorporate it into the company’s engineering unit to beef up its machine learning efforts, while taking advantage of the expertise it has built up over the years connecting employees with interesting internal projects.  Workday provides a SaaS platform for human resources and finance, so the Rallyteam approach fits nicely within the scope of the Workday business.


2017. Google launched recruiting service Hire


Google launched a new service that helps businesses more effectively manage their internal recruiting process - Google Hire. Like other alternatives, it offers businesses a cohesive applicant tracking service that’s deeply integrated with G Suite to make it easier for businesses to communicate with their candidates and track their progress through the interview process. Earlier this year, Google launches its Google for Jobs initiative and its job search feature in Google Search to help job seekers find the right job for them. Now it’s launching this new tool to help businesses manage their candidates. The missing piece here is giving businesses tools for managing job posting — and maybe posting them directly to Google’s new jobs widget in Search. As the company pointed out when it launched its AI-powered job search engine, though, it has no interest in doing this and is instead partnering with major online job boards.


2017. Zoho Recruit adds all new Assessments module


Online recruiting app Zoho Recruit now offers Assessment module as a pre-screening tool. You can create pre-screening questions, and then associate them with the candidate application form. The tool provides a mechanism for pairing relevant questions for each candidate to a particular position.


2016. Hiring service SmartRecruiters raises $30 million



Because managing a large pool of job applicants can be cumbersome, AI-powered recruiting service SmartRecruiters thinks its software has the right tools to keep you organized in your candidate search. Now SmartRecruiters is getting a $30 million funding round in addition to the $25 million already raised. The service counts clients like Square, Atlassian and Equinox gyms, who use SmartRecruiters to manage job postings and communicate about prospective employees. While there is a slew of competition from other hiring software platforms, including Jobvite and Brassring, SmartRecruiters developers believe that the space is large enough for multiple players, since countless companies need help with hiring.


2015. AI-based recruitment service Connectifier raises $6M



A couple of weeks ago, LinkedIn announced a new version of its recruitment product, giving HR teams the ability to look for new hires that most closely match the profiles of employees they already know and like. But LinkedIn was not the first to use search technology, machine learning and so-called “entity recognition” to update and improve the hiring process. A much smaller startup called Connectifier launched a similar product earlier this year, and now it is announcing a fund raise of $6 million to continue building out its platform. Connectifier’s growth (and LinkedIn jumping into the game alongside it) underscores an evolution not just in recruitment software but in the bigger area of vertical search.