Job search app SonicJobs has secured £4.2 million to tackle what a co-founder terms the ‘spammy’ recruitment industry.
Founded in 2017 by Mikhil Raja, Francesca Boccolini and Francesco Masia, SonicJobs has helped over a million candidates apply for jobs through its iOS and Android mobile app and website.
The Series A round was led by Triple Point Ventures, TMT Investments and Ufi Ventures.
The new funding will enable SonicJobs, which is based in London, to further integrate machine learning into its robotic process automation, accelerate bringing on more candidates in the UK and launch in the US, the largest market in the world.
Its aim is to ‘move from Series A to unicorn’.
“Candidates are now mobile-first. They are comparing their job search experience to Amazon, Booking.com and other online consumer experiences,” said CEO Raja. “Imagine if Booking.com redirected you to the hotel’s webpage to complete your booking – how frustrating an experience would that be?
“Yet somehow, we have tolerated a spammy redirection experience in the recruitment industry for many years. SonicJobs has built technology to change that. We never redirect the candidate to other job platforms or career sites.
“We have over 500,000 jobs. Candidates can easily find the most suitable jobs and seamlessly apply for any of them in just one click.”
Other prominent investors have also participated in the round including Richard Flint (Sky Bet), W Fund, Vivek Kumar (PropertyGuru), Paul Huntingdon (Serocor Group), Rod Leefe (serial HR tech investor), Rajan Navani (JetSynthesys), David Hammond (Camden Motor Group), David Brock (Hargreaves Hale), Simon Murphy (TFO Group), Jon Owens (Go City) and Simon Ramery (Fourth Ventures).
According to SonicJobs, its robotic process automation technology leads to a 600% increase in people completing their job applications. This is because candidates are not redirected to multiple employers career sites and can complete their details on the platform.
The technology also stores information of the candidate from previous job applications, making it easier to apply for multiple applications without answering the same questions again and again.
Raja adds: “We are now developing ways that we can also provide value beyond the application process: helping people identify career pathways and providing guidance for candidates to build the best careers and lives for themselves and their families.
“We’ve built a community in the app for our candidates to get career advice and tips on how to find the right job.
“We are creating the first career network for candidates to share knowledge, upgrade their skills and get career coaching throughout their life.”
Seb Wallace, investment director at Triple Point, said: “Online recruitment is broken. Modern job hunters want to see the jobs available to them quickly and want to apply to them instantly. But current experiences do not match expectations.
“After searching for a job online, you face friction after friction in applying: website redirects are pervasive, inputting the same information multiple times is commonplace and, after spending a significant amount of time applying, many employers ghost you.
“Nowhere is this more true than on mobile, where tiny buttons and poorly optimised sites make the experience time consuming and mentally taxing. SonicJobs changes this. It is the first true alternative to the cumbersome, tab-heavy slog that exemplifies applying for a job today.
“With SonicJobs’s cutting-edge robotic automation tools, job hunters can apply for any job at the tap of a button, and do it all from their mobile too. This makes finding a job easier for job hunters, and ensures employers have access to the widest pool of talent they can. It’s a true win-win.”