Candidate.fyi Closes $1.3 Million in Pre-Seed Funding

October 18, 2023 – Candidate.fyi recently secured a $1.3 million pre-seed funding round. The company’s platform offers a candidate portal for candidates to receive information in their journey, pulse surveys to collect feedback from job candidates, the ability for job candidates to book meetings online and create profiles and an upcoming scheduling feature.
Founded by brothers, Kyle and Chris Connors, with expertise derived from roles with Google and technical leadership positions, candidate.fyi integrates with existing workflows and over 40 applicant tracking systems to automate candidate preparation, scheduling, communication, and feedback. Some of its clients include Synthesia, Tropic, Yext, Thrive Market, and MariaDB.
“We find ourselves amidst a shift, where the emerging generation insists on best-in-class experiences in every facet of their lives,” said Mr. Connors. “Among the areas most ripe for change is the hiring experience – where the stakes are high, yet expectations often remain disappointingly low. We take pride in delivering the long-awaited solution that empowers employers to rise to this demand and elevate their hiring experience for today and the future.”
“Our candidate engagement product suite helps streamline communications, feedback, and scheduling between talent teams and candidates,” he said. “By providing a unified suite to power candidate engagement, talent teams are able to deliver a best in class experience and drastically increase their team’s efficiency.”
“The round was led by SuperAngel.Fund,” said Mr. Connors. “We’re also fortunate enough to have participation from notable industry leaders like John Renfro (former CHRO of Disney), Bryan Zaslow (founder and CEO of JBC), and many others. We even had participation from several customers too.”
Investment Funding
Investors are pouring money into recruiting solutions businesses, especially those with a psychology and data science component. Here’s a look at some other recent funding deals secured by these companies from the Hunt Scanlon Media archives:
HR software start-up Rippling has raised $500 million in a new funding round initially intended to help customers make payroll in the aftermath of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) collapse. The round, led by technology investor Greenoaks Capital, gave Rippling the same valuation of $11.25 billion it had clinched after its previous capital raise last year, the company said. Rippling announced in a March 17 blog post that it received a $500 million series E funding round. Putting the round together took less than three days and took place after the SVB collapse, according to the post. It also noted that it has moved its banking operations to JPMorgan Chase.
Glider AI, a Cupertino, CA-based skill intelligence platform provider, raised $10 million in series A funding. The round was led by Primera Capital. The company intends to use the funds to continue its expansion in contingent programs and permanent hiring, furthering the development of proprietary technology, and growing its global team. Founded in 2020 by Satish Kumar, Glider AI provides hiring solutions, including screening, assessments, coding/video interviews, and upskilling software to scale hiring talent for the enterprise, staffing firms, and MSPs.
ShiftKey, a Dallas-based healthcare recruiting company, has closed on a funding round sponsored by majority investor Lorient Capital, valuing the company in excess of $2 billion. Crunchbase News reported the round was for $300 million. Lorient’s investment was completed through a continuation vehicle that was led by the Ares Management Secondaries funds and Pantheon. Additional investors participating along with Lorient, Ares, and Pantheon include Clearlake Capital and Health Velocity Capital.
Chicago-headquartered referral recruiting service Hunt Club has raised $40 million Series B round co-led by WestCap and Sator Grove. The investment round follows Hunt Club’s $10 million Series A financing in October 2021, and will fuel the company’s national expansion, technology platform enhancements, and broaden its community of over 20,000 business leaders who help connect the most innovative companies to the world’s top candidates. “We’re reimagining the entire talent process. Top talent leaders are not only hard to find, but they are hard to reach – and traditional recruiting firms aren’t equipped to innovate for their customers,” said Nick Cromydas, co-founder and CEO of Hunt Club. “Our technology is bridging that gap, introducing a personalized approach to helping companies change the way they approach talent acquisition. Hunt Club is proud to partner with WestCap, a premier growth equity firm led by a team that has founded, invested in, and operated tech-enabled marketplaces such as Airbnb for over 20 years.”
Related: RefAssured Secures Funding
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media