Back in May we reported that Simply Hired, a job portal with about 30 million users, was shutting down its existing operations as part of an acquisition, and today we finally have the details about what is happening next: its assets have been acquired by Recruit Holdings, the massive group based out of Japan that owns Indeed.com and many other recruitment and job listings portals. Recruit plans to continue operating simplyhired.com, but now as a publishing partner of Indeed.
Terms of the deal are not being disclosed but we will see if we can find them out.
Recruit was the rumored buyer, according to multiple sources who contacted us directly after our first report, as well as articles subsequently published elsewhere, although neither company would confirm the details to us directly at the time.
Today, it’s a different story:
“Recruit Holdings Co., Ltd. hereby announces that it has acquired the assets of Simply Hired, effective today. www.simplyhired.com will continue to operate as a job search destination and will be a publishing partner of Indeed,” a short statement noted. “Recruit is committed to increasing its leadership position in the HR industry through both organic growth and M&A activities. In addition to strengthening its operations in Japan, Recruit sees many opportunities to grow in international markets and become a global HR leader.”
The acquisition underscores how there is ongoing consolidation in the recruitment market. In June, Monster acquired Jobr, a “Tinder for jobs” app. Microsoft’s $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn will also raises the question of how and if Microsoft plans to build up LinkedIn’s sizeable recruitment business, or potentially sell it off to one of the other giant specialists in the field.
Recruit Holdings itself has been an active buyer not just of job finding sites like Indeed.com, but also of adjacent services, such as Treatwell (née Wahanda), a Style Seat-type company that lets you book appointments with beauty specialists; and Quandoo, an Opentable-style restaurant booking service. This latest move to grab Simply Hired will expand its footprint and economy of scale in owning the sites that people visit the most when looking for work, or to book workers.
Simply Hired was originally founded in 2004 and is based in Sunnyvale. In its time as a startup, it raised just over $34 million in funding from investors that include Dave McClure, Foundation Capital, Guy Kawasaki, Fox, IDG Ventures and Ronald Conway, and expanded its operations to 24 countries and 12 languages.
The company built a brand for itself as not only a place where people could upload job listings, but more importantly as a search engine for jobs listed around the internet. (No big surprise, then, that Google was among those reportedly interested in buying Simply Hired some years ago.)
Simply Hired is no longer disclosing stats about its traffic, but just before Indeed acquired it, the company itself said it had around 30 million visitors each month, and that its searches covered some 6 million jobs across 700,000 employers. In comparison, Monster claimed in Q1 it had some 50,000 employers in its database, and does not disclose MAUs. Indeed.com says it has more than 180 million monthly active visitors.