London-based tech startup hackajob receives £5M ($6.7M) in funding to expand operations worldwide

We have reached a pivotal point in human history where more people in the world now live in cities opposed to rural areas. One of the major driving factors for this is the availability of jobs in urban areas. London, for example, experienced a huge population surge during the industrial revolution, and jobs, along with culture, have continued to be a huge driving force behind the city’s appeal.

For one of London’s most well-recognized jobs, it’s fleet of metropolitan police officers, a new policy change could help attract an even greater number of candidates to the city and the service. Metro recently announced that the metropolitan police have relaxed its tattoo ban to recruit more officers. But for a large number of individuals that are looking for jobs elsewhere in the city, a new startup is building momentum as a recruitment pioneer, with aspirations to take their service beyond the UK capital.

hackajob, a London-based tech startup which helps technical talent find their next job through human expertise and AI, has secured £5 million ($6.7 million) in funding which they will use to continue developing their technology and company expansion.

hackajob received the funding from an investor pool led by AXA Venture Partners. The round also included investment from Downing Ventures. The series A round follows on from two previous rounds led by Downing Ventures and angel investor Dragos Nicolaescu.

The funds will be used to fast-track the global expansion of the company – with plans to open offices in Paris immediately and Berlin in November – the US will follow in 2019. These new offices will be in some of the most vibrant tech hubs in the world, allowing thousands of technical professional to find a job based on their skills, not their CV.

The company will also continue building out their proprietary technologies for recruitment, expanding the client and candidate relation teams, and investing in marketing. These focuses will enable hackajob to help more people find their dream job, supporting their goal of bridging the digital skills gap globally.

CEO and co-founder of hackajob, Razvan Creanga, said: “We are thrilled to be able to continue our mission of making the hiring process unbiased, fairer and meritocratic on a global scale. Our constant focus on innovation and deep understanding of technical talent, alongside our in-house expertise, has allowed us to develop a unique business and we’re very excited to take it to the next level.”

Founded in 2014, hackajob was launched to improve the current traditional recruitment agency approach and make it easier for companies to hire technical talent. Rather than allow recruitment to be clouded by unconscious bias, hackajob reimagines the process by building it around the needs of technical talent and the framework required to engage with them.

Hiring technical talent is hard and becoming increasingly more competitive. CVs rarely give enough information about a candidate, including how they code or their cloud infrastructure understanding. And, interviewing without truly knowing the full capability of an applicant and their relevance to the role can be bad for both sides. Practices have been this way for decades and the industry is ready for change.

COO and co-founder Mark Chaffey added: “After seeing the impact our unique approach to tech recruitment has had on our client base; by helping them improve their quality of hire whilst saving huge amounts vs traditional channels, we’re incredibly excited about scaling hackajob globally to help more companies hire the right tech talent for their business.”

With hackajob, clients are automatically matched with highly curated candidates from their talent pool of over 60,000 technical people and can view their code or cloud infrastructure implementation alongside their profile. From there, companies can manage interviews, integrate with existing ATS’s and ask candidates to complete specific challenges unique for their company, built by hackajob. As the process is streamlined by technology, this allows companies to achieve significant savings over other hiring channels and a lower cost per hire.

Imran Akram of AXA Venture Partners, who will be joining the board, said: “hackajob have transformed recruiting with data, evidenced by the proportion of recommended candidates who are hired and we are excited to be helping them expand internationally.”

Investment Director at Downing Ventures, Richard Lewis, added: “We are delighted to continue supporting this fantastic team, who have come a long way since 2015, and thrilled to work with AXA Venture Partners throughout this next phase of global growth.”

Disclosure: This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company