Job search engine Simply Hired is expanding its operations into Canada, UK, Australia and India. The venture-backed startup was once an acquisition target for Google, and was recently called outfor showing enormous jumps in traffic numbers that may have had something to do with shady tactics.
Simply Hired has always made it clear its ambition is to grow into the largest online database of jobs on the planet. To get there, Simply Hired aggregates and indexes data on millions of job listings worldwide from a variety of sources, including large and small job boards, newspaper and classified listings, and directly from company websites. Job seekers simply type in a keyword and location, and Simply Hired returns relevant job postings from all of these sources so users avoid conducting multiple searches on various sites.
Simply Hired currently powers the international job channel for MySpace UK, and supplements LinkedIn’s job board with millions of job listings from Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, France, Germany and Spain. Depending on where you look, the company says their database contains in between four and seven million jobs, and claims that 1.5 million will be added thanks to the international expansion.
Yet most local job search engines and recruitment portals have long fought their battles country by country, and market shares don’t move all that much. It will be hard for Simply Hired to get its foot in the door, let alone challenge the leaders.
Simply Hired has raised a total of $17.7 million in three rounds of investment, part of it from well-known angel investors like Guy Kawasaki, Ron Conway and Dave McClure. Its last funding round, which was provided by Fox and Foundation Capital, amounted to $13.5 million two years and a half ago.
Competitors include Indeed, HotJobs, Monster and Vast to some degree.
