Workrise down, Omnipresent up: news of the recruitment marketing industry

Fasten your safety belts, this update is going to be a long one! The amount of acquisitions, funding, expansions, and so on is truly amazing this time around. Maybe it has something to do with spring? Anyway, let’s get started:

• Workrise tumbles:  Austin unicorn Workrise laid off an unspecified number of employees as it exits several verticals and seeks to divest parts of its business. The company, which has built a workforce management platform for the skilled trades, said that it was laying off employees but declined to say how many. Just last May, TechCrunch reported that the company had raised $300 million at a $2.9 billion valuation. At that time, Workrise currently had more than 600 employees in 25 offices. A user on anonymous community app for the workplace, Blind, said that the layoff affected 450 people but that number has not been confirmed with the company. The company, formerly known as RigUp, said it was pivoting back to a focus on energy. Hmm.
• MeaningfulGigs raises cash: Meaningful Gigs fashions itself as the go-to marketplace for freelance designers in Africa looking tomake a living by taking on assignments from multinationals in the U.S. like Coca-Cola, Audi, Vans and IDEO. The D.C.-based startup is set to accelerate its growth by signing up more designers on its platform after raising $6 million in seed funding. The company is planning an aggressive marketing campaign to get at least 100 corporates on board over the next year, from the current 40 (17 being major enterprises) currently using its platform. Congrats!
• Stepstone France shuts down:  StepStone, the leading European recruitment marketplace, has pulled out of France. The company had limited presence in the country with StepStone.fr. In January 2021, the domain recorded around 300,000 total monthly visits, according to SimilarWeb. However, the dot-fr domain now redirects to StepStone.com, and there is no recorded traffic to StepStone.fr. StepStone.fr never really challenged to the dominant recruitment marketplaces in France: Indeed.com (including SimplyHired.fr and Glassdoor.fr); the HelloWork network of job sites, and the recruitment segment of horizontal LeBonCoin. So long, farewell!
• ForceFinder shuts down: Job board software provider ForceFinder has announced that it is shutting down as of May 31, 2022. ForceFinder and JobBoardHQ have been working together to provide a migration path for ForceFinder clients to move to the JobBoardHQ platform without losing any data or features. JobBoardHQ has successfully migrated a number of ForceFinder clients over the last couple of years. Farewell!
• Handshake acquires Talentspace: European virtual and hybrid recruiting platform Talentspace was just acquired by talent network Handshake. It is Handshake‘s first acquisition to date and follows a $200 million Series F in January that valued its business at $3.5 billion. Handshake helps students and alumni build rapport and secure jobs with recruiters. To date, the company has successfully attracted over 21 million students and alumni to its platform hailing from over 1,400 educational institutions. Very interesting.
• Omnipresent raises lots of funds: London-based SaaS employment platform Omnipresent has raised $120 million. The company will also add several hundred new members to its distributed team, who work remotely from around the world. Founded in 2019, the company acts as the legal employer on behalf of its clients in every country. Its proprietary digital platform and SaaS product, the OmniPlatform, can manage employee onboarding through to offboarding in more than 160 countries and regions worldwide. Impressive.
• Reed’s profits up, revenue down: U.K. recruitment company Reed Online Ltd has posted its financial results for the year to June 2021, which shows falling revenue but higher operating profits. The company recorded a 19% decline in revenue from £50.2 million ($66.3 million U.S.) in 2020 to £40.6 million ($53.6 million U.S.). However, operating profit more than doubled from £2.1 million to £4.6 million and the operating profit margin went up from 4.3% to 11.3%. Win some, lose some.
• Apploi raises cash: Apploi announced that it raised $25 million in a Series B round. Apploi can assist with the collection, monitoring and updating of staff credentials with reminders to keep nurses’ and caregivers’ licensures up to date. Digital employee records integration helps recruiters reconnect with past applicants, while built-in messaging (for email and text) and interview scheduling ostensibly simplifies the hiring process. Intriguing.
• Red Arbor takes over InfoJobs Brazil: Global online classified specialist Adevinta has sold all its shares in recruitment marketplace InfoJobs Brazil to Spain-based internet company RedArbor, which specializes in jobs and real estate services. Latin America-focused RedArbor acquired the shares through its subsidiary CompuTrabajo Holding and now controls 100% of the business. InfoJobs Brazil is one of the Top 3 recruitment sites in the country, with 44 million registered candidates. It will join forces with job vertical CompuTrabajo to “create a regional leader in online job marketplaces, with a significant base of regular active users.” Wow.
• Malt acquires COMATCH: European freelancer marketplace Malt acquired COMTACH, the curated marketplace​​ for independent management consultants and industry experts. Founded in 2013, Malt’s marketplace matches the right freelance talent to businesses’ project needs.  In 2021, the started raised €80 million and has been consolidating its position as Europe’s leading freelancer platform, with a community of 320,000 freelancers. Based in Berlin, COMATCH is an online marketplace for independent top management consultants and industry experts. Congrats!
• JobPlanet plans IPO: South Korea-based recruitment marketplace JobPlanet is pursuing an initial public offering to raise growth funds in the second half of the next year. The shares will be floated on the Kosdaq [Korea Securities Dealers Association] Index. Launched in 2013, JobPlanet is operated by Seoul-based BrainCommerce. More than 6,000 companies actively use the job site, which also has 4.5 million individual members.  Good luck!
• Ukrainian war news: Freelance marketplace Fiverr joined the raft of companies suspending their business in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Recruit Holdings announced its operating companies have suspended business in Russia and added new content moderations procedures in light of the Ukraine war. This includes Indeed and Glassdoor. Morten Heuing has become the latest board member to leave HeadHunter, the leading recruitment vertical in Russia. Marketplace specialist Prosus is cutting ties with Avito.ru, its star classified business in Russia. Avito is the No. 1 classified business in Russia. The Russian state telecom regulator RosKomNadzor blocked Ukraine-based recruitment site Jooble in Russia. Jooble had already suspended operations in Russia due to its attack on Ukraine, but its site remained operational with various anti-war messaging. Finally, Austria-based job boards Karriere.at, Hokify and Jobs.at have come together to launch a free job platform, UkraineJobs.at, to help refugees apply for work easily and with minimal bureaucracy.
• Talent.com raises funds: Talent.com — a portal that aggregates both job ads posted directly by recruiters as well as ads from third-party recruitment sites — has picked up $120 million, a Series B round of funding that it will use to continue expanding internationally, investing further in its programmatic search platform, and introducing new products and services for users. The site currently lists around 30 million jobs from 1 million companies across 78 countries and 29 languages and sees more than 28 million monthly active visitors across that footprint. Congrats!
• The Works grows:  Netherlands-based The Works, which owns and operates 26 job boards, saw its revenue increase 20% last year, a spike the company attributed to organic sales driven by international expansion, digitalization and rectech use. Founded in 2000, The Works said all its brands showed strong performance with turnover increasing to €603 million ($665 million U.S.) in 2021 from €505 million ($556 million U.S.) in 2020. The company is also active in Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Austria, the U.K., Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. Very impressive.
• iCIMS acquires Candidate.id: Applicant tracking system provider iCims acquired Candidate.ID, a provider of marketing automation software for talent acquisition based in Glasgow, Scotland. The company said Candidate.ID will enable its customers to “know” and qualify talent better with lead scoring. Intriguing.
• Boss Zhipin revenue up: Kanzhun Limited, a Chinese online recruitment platform well known for its core product of Boss Zhipin (BZ), has seen its adjusted net income turn positive in full-year 2021, and its revenue more than doubled compared to 2020. Its revenue for the fourth quarter reached $169.8 million (RMB 1.09 billion), up by 69.1% YoY. For FY2021, its revenues increased by 119.0% YoY to $668.4 million (RMB4,259.1 million). Impressive.
• Archie sees growth and funding:  Archie, a collaboration hub for businesses working with freelancers to manage all that comes with it — onboarding, contracts, payments, accounting and tax filings – has raised $4.5 million in funding. Since last April, Archie is seeing $15 million in payment volume run-rate, up eight times since July 2021 alone. The new funding enables the company to boost its engineering team and technology development as it starts to amp up its efforts on the growth side. Very interesting.
• Hirewell acquires Rainmakers: Hirewell, a Chicago-headquartered staffing company, acquired Rainmakers, a jobs website that connects companies with sales talent. The deal closed March 30. The acquisition comes after last year’s $21 million investment in Hirewell from global investment firm Prytek. Congrats!

Well…as John Lennon once said, ‘I got blisters on my fingers!’. Almost, anyway. An impressive round of news, and I suspect that things will continue apace for the next several months. I’ll have more for you next time around!

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