If you think European startups tend to lack the ambition of their US equivalents, guess again. Today, Qapa, a new Paris-based startup went live with €1.7 million in the bank and 1 not-so-simple goal: to decrease unemployment in France by 10% within the next year.
Yes, sounds a little far-fetched. In France alone there are 4 million unemployed. Then again, each year some 900,000 jobs are not filled. And this is where Qapa is hoping to come in.
CEO Stéphanie Delestre – who was the former COO of Qype – believes that recruitment has not really changed over the last 10 years, with companies still turning to expensive job ads as the primary solution. Rather than charging to post an ad, Qapa is taking a different approach: posting ads and consulting profiles and CVs will be entirely free. Recruiters will only pay once they actually want to connect with the person. In a way, it isn’t too different from what we see on many of the dating sites out there.
Qapa is planning to leverage the social web (in a BranchOut type-of-way) and its algorithm that matches candidates to pertinent job openings in real-time. In fact, the name Qapa is actually an acronyme for “Qualification Application Proactive Algorithm.” When recruiters post an ad they will immediately see corresponding profiles and will only pay to contact the ones they are interested in.
The company recently announced that it had closed a €1.7 million round with Partech International and 360 Capital Partners. I guess we’ll just have to meet back here in 1 year to see if Qapa has achieved its goal or not.