Back in August, Collegefeed, a service that combines crowdsourcing with social networking to connect students with each other and potential employers, raised $1.8 million in a round led by Accel Partners. The much smaller Graduateland is trying to create a large recruitment network based on international universities. Now, Sunstone Capital has led a $1.3 million investment round in Tyba, which has been playing in the similar space of the so-called “junior recruitment market” – effectively recruitment-speak for hiring university and college graduates.
Jimmy Fussing Nielsen (managing partner at Sunstone Capital) says “the junior recruitment model is broken. We looked at several companies in the space, and the Tyba founder team convinced us with their fundamental approach at fixing junior recruitment.”
Co-Founder Eiso Kant says the company has recently started giving a select set of companies access to its recruiter solutions. Tyba believes that the large amounts of professional information that users provide on the platform will allow for a more accurate matching of hirers and prospects.
The idea is to attract new young recruits by offering them the ability to showcase themselves beyond ordinary web profiles or their CV (see some examples here).
This might sound a bit simplistic but it’s basically all about having lots of data. Then recruiters can filter the information around ‘soft-skills’ and the interests of the talented young things they hope to attract.
Earlier this year BraveNewTalent, another player in this area, pivoted away from ‘social recruitment’ and just focusing on jobs towards the enterprise and more of an education focus. We’ve yet to find out how that’s going for them.