Five acquisitions and a lot of money: news of the job board industry

It feels like 2021 may be picking up some bad habits from 2020, starting with five acquisitions. Let’s hope that changes soon! The job board industry ended the year with a decent number of acquisitions and consolidation, and January has given us more of the same. So without further ado, let’s see what’s happened in the past few weeks:

• JobandTalent lands $108M: Madrid-based Jobandtalent, a digital temp staffing agency which operates a dual-sided platform that connects temp workers with employers needing regular casual labor in sectors like transport and logistics, has added €88 million (~$108M) to its Series C — bringing the total raised following an earlier (2019) closing of the round to €166M. The company says more than 80,000 workers have used its platform to secure temp gigs in the last year across the seven markets where it operates in Europe and LatAm (namely: Spain, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, Mexico and Colombia); while 750+ employers are signed up to “recurrently manage a large part of their workforce”, as it puts it. Impressive.
• Appcast launches new service: The programmatic job ad company Appcast announced the public launch of Appcast Premium, a comprehensive enterprise managed service for optimizing a company’s entire digital job advertising program. Appcast Premium combines Appcast’s programmatic technology with its team of experts in recruitment advertising to provide complete coverage across all leading job sites, helping companies find qualified people quickly. Good idea.
• Iziwork raises $43M: French startup Iziwork raised a $43 million funding round. Cathay Innovation and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund are participating in this funding round. The company has been building a platform focused on improving temporary employment. While it’s a relatively large funding round, the startup is quite young. It was founded in September 2018 and it has raised $68 million overall. The company manages a marketplace of temporary work; 2,000 companies are using the platform in France and Italy, and 800,000 candidates have used the app to access job opportunities. Congrats!
• Grabjobs plans expansion: Singapore-based job portal GrabJobs is one of the first of Southeast Asian recruitment startups to seriously consider international expansion. Southeast Asia has several successful job tech companies operating in the domestic market, including JobsDB, Jobstreet and JobsCentral, but these have yet to expand outside the region. “While the white-collar job market is saturated, the pink and blue-collar markets are underserved,” said Emmanuel Crouy, co-founder and CEO of GrabJobs. Intriguing.
• CareerGig acquires Moonlighting:  CareerGig announced the acquisition of Moonlighting, a SaaS platform that empowers individuals to build their own freelancer profiles, and allows businesses to hire talented professionals quickly and affordably. Founded in 2014 by Jeff Tennery, Ritesh Johar, and Roy Slater, Moonlighting has a network of over 850,000 freelancers and small businesses that will augment the CareerGig community. With this newly acquired network, CareerGig which launched in July 2020, will continue to expand its network of offerings. Hmm.
• OneWire is acquired: Recruiter.com has entered into a binding letter of intent to acquire OneWire, a SaaS-based recruiting and software platform focused on the financial services sector. The acquisition will include the OneWire SaaS platform (www.onewire.com), Matchbook software (www.matchbook.io), and OneWire’s executive search business. The purchase price shall be in restricted common stock of Recruiter.com. Interesting.
• IranTalent acquires Hire.camp: Aseyeh Hatami, the founder and CEO of IranTalent, says that they have purchased a 70% stake in the ATS. “We invested in Hire.camp. It was a two year old ATS and very much similar to Recruitee,” said Hatami, referring to the Dutch talent acquisition platform. Hire.camp automates hiring, CV parsing, resume rating and interview management. This is the first official investment by IranTalent in the HR technology field. Congrats!
• Stepstone takes over hotel site:  YourCareerGroup GmbH, part of Axel Springer’s StepStone Group, has taken over the Swiss job site Hoteljob.ch from business association HotellerieSuisse. YourCareerGroup operates the online job board Hotelcareer.ch. With its latest acquisition the company has expanded its portfolio in the hotel, catering and tourism industries in Switzerland. Smart move.
• Alma Media acquires Techloop.io: Alma Media-owned recruitment company LMC has acquired for an undisclosed amount Czech startup Quantiq that offers IT job matching site Techloop.io. Techloop’s algorithm-based service analyses registered applicants’profiles and matches them with listed IT vacancies. Techloop’s revenue model is based on subscription fees, job postings and recruitment consultancy. In 2020, the company saw revenue of €300,000 ($367,748 U.S.).  Everyone’s buying!
• Proposed EU regulations could help job boards: European Union Executive VP Margrethe Vestager introduced two proposed regulations this week aimed at digital platforms. One, called the Digital Markets Act, applies to “gatekeepers” or large companies on the web such as Google. It provides several new rules for such firms, and some job board operators are lauding the proposal. The Digital Markets Act would require gatekeepers to no longer use data they collect from businesses they host when competing against those businesses. It would also require interoperability. The bill would make it more difficult for firms such as Google and Facebook to launch and market services such as Google for Jobs and Facebook Jobs. Very interesting.
• Berger says goodbye to Talent Inc: Talent, Inc., a CV-writing firm recently acquired by BV Investment, has announced that it plans to shuffle its leadership. The company has appointed Byron Matthews to replace Jeff Berger as CEO. “Building this company has been my greatest experience and professional achievement, but after seven years, I’m excited to take some time off and begin the next chapter,” Berger said. Mike Ricciardelli has also been appointed as president and chief operating officer. Congrats, Jeff!

Well! Lots of sales, lots of money raised, five acquisitions, and some interesting changes developing in the EU. Could make for an exciting spring. You know I’ll be keeping track. Until next time…

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