Hiretual Secures $26 Million and Rebrands to hireEZ

With new funding and a new name, hireEZ plans to invest further in product innovation, expand operations, and scale its global team to broaden its position in outbound recruiting. Let’s take a closer look.

February 16, 2022 – Hiretual, an AI-powered global talent platform, has closed $26 million in funding led by Conductive Ventures. The company is also rebranding to hireEZ, which reflects its mission to focus on outbound recruiting. “In these unprecedented times, recruiting has become an impossible task,” said founder and CEO Steven Jiang. “Recruiters and hiring managers can no longer sit back and wait for people to apply, they have to shift to outbound recruiting in order to scale their companies effectively. That’s why we are evolving our brand.” The firm’s new platform is designed to help recruiters overcome inherent challenges of traditional inbound recruiting solutions that have magnified the pressures that recruiters face in one of the tightest labor markets in recent history.

“When Steven shared with me his vision of ‘outbound recruiting made easy,’ I immediately understood how this could transform an industry that’s ripe for change,” said Carey Lai, managing director at Conductive Ventures. “We are excited to partner with hireEZ and support their growth journey. They have a reputation for innovation and are poised to fundamentally change how teams build their workforce of the future. In addition, we were attracted by their strong growth trajectory and capital efficiency – growing ARR by 2.5x in 2021 and the fact that they support 40 percent of the Top 20 companies ranked by Forbes as the World’s Most Valuable Brands. Their tremendous growth speaks volumes.”

Since 2015, the company has been dedicated to helping jobs find people with an AI-powered outbound recruiting platform that gives recruiters greater access to untapped talent pools, scalable candidate engagement automation and seamless integrations with ATS and CRM platforms.

With hireEZ, organizations have access to more than 750 million candidate profiles from 45+ open web platforms for more than 5,000 leading companies worldwide. With the new funding, hireEZ plans to invest further in product innovation, expand operations, scale its team globally and broaden the firm’s focus on outbound recruiting.

Investment Funding

Here’s a look at some other recent funding deals secured by these companies from the Hunt Scanlon Media archives:

SeekOut has announced a $115 million series C funding round led by Tiger Global Management. The round values the Seattle-based company – an artificial intelligence-powered talent search engine – at more than $1.2 billion. “The Great Resignation remains top of mind for both employees and employers as we enter 2022,” said Matthew Merker, research manager, talent acquisition and strategy at IDC. “The way employees look for work opportunities has fundamentally changed, and employers need to rethink how they find new talent and retain existing talent. SeekOut’s data-driven Talent 360 platform offers organizations an advanced set of capabilities that help ease this transition and redefine enterprise talent optimization moving forward.”

Hirewell, a Chicago-based talent acquisition firm, secured an investment of $21 million from Prytek, a global investment firm with expertise in integrating global services firms with cutting-edge technologies. Prytek will provide capital to enable Hirewell to accelerate its organic growth and integrate technology into its managed recruiting services. As part of this investment, Hirewell will acquire ICV, a Tel Aviv-based software company. “The talent acquisition space has evolved significantly over the past ten years, but technology has yet to truly disrupt the industry,” said Matt Massucci, founder and CEO of Hirewell. “Recruiters increasingly rely on multiple platforms, most of which don’t integrate or have limited functionality, and some of which actually compete with the recruiters they claim to support. The ability to combine best-in-class recruiters with cutting-edge technology will equip us to be the ideal recruiting partner for companies that are serious about finding top talent. We are thrilled to partner with Prytek to take that step and continue delivering powerful results to our clients.”

Worksome recently closed a $13 million Series A funding round for its freelance talent platform — after racking up 10x growth in revenue since January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a remote working boom. Founded in 2017, Worksome is an enterprise platform that connects companies with freelancers looking for professional roles. The company helps medium and large companies, working with many freelancers at a time, filling vacancies within teams rather than assisting companies in outsourcing projects. According to Worksome CEO and co-founder Morten Petersen, most enterprises use managed service providers (MSPs) to manage and pay external workers. He said that they use “outdated technology that is not built for managing fluid workforces to handle complex compliance processes around hiring and managing freelance workforces.”

SeekOut, the AI-powered talent 360 platform, has received $65 million in series B funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from existing investors Madrona Venture Group and Mayfield. This capital raise brings SeekOut’s total funding to $73 million. This funding round values SeekOut at close to half a billion dollars. SeekOut’s growth and expansion has been driven by the critical role it plays in empowering talent acquisition teams to recruit hard-to-find and diverse talent. SeekOut has consistently received high scores and strong reviews in analyst and customer assessments.

GoodJob, a platform that aims to use psychology and data science to match workers with jobs, recently raised $3 million to increase marketing and sales efforts in major markets across the U.S. “GoodJob’s solution is ideal for today’s market,” said Stephen D. Johnston, CEO of GoodJob. “Prior to an interview and without introducing bias, employers can quickly assess a candidate’s fit on the front end of the hiring process,” said Mr. Johnston. “This approach allows companies to spend time only on candidates who have a high probability of success, which significantly impacts hiring efficiency, especially as companies move to no-touch hiring practices.”

Turing.com, which describes itself as an automated platform that enables companies to use and manage remote software developers, has assembled $32 million Series B funding. The capitalization round was led by $3.3 billion fund WestBridge Capital. The round includes a number of high-profile investors, including Foundation Capital, which led Turing’s seed round. Altair Capital, Mindset Ventures, Frontier Ventures and Gaingels also participated in the Series B round. Driven by the massive global shift to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Turing taps into a global pool of developers to help companies hire in markets such as the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, where it has been difficult and expensive to hire and retain software engineers.

The Mom Project, a talent marketplace, closed a $25 million series B funding round, bringing total funding at the Chicago-based company to $36 million. The Mom Project aims to connect women, including mothers, with employment opportunities. Its platform has amassed more than 275,000 users and more than 2,000 companies, including brands like Apple, Nike, Gap and BP. “Together we’ve proven that hiring, retaining and supporting moms and caregivers isn’t just a nice thing to do — it’s great for business,” said Allison Robinson, founder and CEO. “We’re in a unique moment in time where companies are embracing flexible work and prioritizing inclusion, and are excited to rapidly accelerate our efforts to unlock the potential of moms in the workplace. Our latest round of funding will help expand our Enterprise product suite, build out our mom community engagement strategy and engage with more small business customers.”