Accel-backed Job Today has pulled in a $20 million Series B round, less than a year after it raised its $10M Series A. The new round is led byFlint Capital, with participation from existing investorsinvestors Accel Partners, Mangrove Capital, and Felix Capital.
Also investing three Europeanmedia companies, two inmarkets where Job Todays app is already available Astremedia (Spain) and Channel 4 (UK) and a third in a market its preparingto launch soon: German Media Pool VC.
A US launch for Job Today is also on the cards, although theres no firm timeframe and no media in partner in place as yet.
The in Luxembourg-based startup, which launched back in May2015, has added two million registered jobseekers to its platform in the past 12 months, according to co-founder PolinaMontano,as well as signing up more than150,000 businesses.
It says it has processed more than 20 million job applications in that time and claims 74 per cent of job matches on its platform are made on the same day.
Were seeing great traction in our main markets, which is UK and Spain, Montanotells TechCrunch, discussing its plans for the new funding. The money which we just raised is to support this growth. Also to fuel the expansion to other major European countries. And also well start building our presence in the US.
Big spending onteam and product is also planned.Our product is everything for us. We are a tech company, after all so we will be heavily investing in our product team and in the team generally, to build a great company to take it global.
What we are doing is really changing the way how people are searching and finding casual jobs, she adds. We bring online lots of jobs which today find themselves offline basically jobs which people advertise via a sign in the window and through referrals.
The app lets employers and jobseekerscreate a basic profile, listing a few key details such as language skills/requirements, availability/start date and last previous work experience with everything else done via a mobile messaging interface,and matching of candidates to jobs done by location and other workcriteria. The basic aim is to do away with the need for paper CVs for the service industry sector Job Today is targeting.
Discussing Job Todays new clutch of media investors, Polinasays the ideais to useTV as an acquisition andawarenesschannel to keep growing usagea strategy that is also being used by other competitors in this space as rivals battle it out to create adominant mobile jobs network.
We see huge value in collaborating with media partners,says Polina. What we are building is a really accessible product for huge industries such as hospitality and retail and other service industries and TV happens to be a great means of communication to present your product to society.
This year especially has seen a raftof European jobs app startups gunning to mobilizehiring for small businesses via a job-focused messaging app, including the likes ofCornerJob(which also usesmedia partnerships to promote its app),Jobandtalent (which has pivoted away from enterprise recruitment in favor of a similarfocus on SMEs),inploiand Gig, to name a few.
MeanwhileWhatsApp is alsotesting business accounts. And given the reachof its global network (of more than a billion active users) the messaging giantwould clearly bewell positioned to step into the small business hiring space itself. Hence startups trying to carve out their own hiring app empires havinga distinct sense of urgency.
CornerJob, for instance, raised a $10M Series A in February and then fast followed that with a $25M Series B in July. Job Todays $10M and $20M raises are similarly closely spaced.
And while all these hiring app rivals claim to have slightly different focuses andservices, theres clearly a strong sensethat a winner could take all here soinvestors are being convinced to fuelteams to scale faster and spread networks wider.
Polina says Job Today is being used both by small businesses such as restaurants and shops but has alsoattracted some big brands including the likes of McDonalds, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, Subway, and Holiday Inn.
By making those jobs visible to jobseekers, by bringing them online, we do believe were doing something which is very good becauseit helps society, she adds. We are participating in job creation and we are making this hiring process for employers really easy and frictionless on one side so they might actually consider hiring someone when before they wouldnt think of it.
Its primary focus is on user growth at this point but she notesit has just beganrolling out a paid product in the UK its first tentative steps towards monetization. Early results putthe conversion rate at one in fiveusers, according to Polina.
The business model which we are applying today is a good old tested and proven model of classifieds, she adds. In other words we are charging employers a fee for posting a job and offer a monthly subscription.
The app does also allow employers to post some jobsfor free but shesays the paid option offers additional convenience such as more job postings, more interaction with job seekers although she stresses it is really very, very, early days for the monetization experiment and pricing is likely to evolve.
These are our first steps in introducing the model to the market. Conversion is great but clearly we will be maturing this business model and further refining the packages throughout 2017, she adds.
