You’d think that platforms offering jobs listings couldn’t be innovated on much these days, but London-based Otta wants to prove that theory wrong. It has a platform for matching jobs at tech companies with candidates by aggregating a lot of information about the company (founder bios, employee reviews, salaries, industry) with the roles offered. Think a sort of “CrunchBase for Jobs”. It’s now raised a substantial Series A funding round led by Tiger Global Management. Existing investors include LocalGlobe, Founder Collective and a number of angels.
Angel investors backing Otta include Indeed’s Paul Forster, Alex Bouaziz of Deel, Ben Herman of Canvas.com (now Kin Ventures), Sophie Adelman of Multiverse, and Sultan Saidov and Abakar Saidov of Beamery.
The so-called “Great Resignation” — where people have decided to re-evaluate their jobs and careers in light of the pandemic — has created an opportunity for sites like Otta, which can appear to be a lot more transparent about job opportunities, and also speak to the “pickiness” of today’s candidates, many of whom want to work remotely.
Indeed, Otta says that 37% of its users say their number one priority is meaningful work (whereas only 18% prioritize compensation). That phenomenon means that high-growth businesses, especially in tech, are struggling to attract people.
With over 250,000 companies growing headcount 20%+ a year and 2021 seeing more VC money invested into technology companies than ever before, the war for talent rages on. Fast-growth businesses in particular are struggling to attract the greatest people.
Sam Franklin, co-founder and CEO said: “When we started Otta, people told us job search was soul-crushing. Recruitment felt like it was stuck in the classifieds era. We believe there’s a different way, and we call it candidate-first job search. It’s a new category that flips industry dynamics on its head. Candidates are prioritized, rather than treated like second-class citizens, and this attracts the best talent to our product.”
Remus Brett from LocalGlobe said: “We backed Sam and the team when Otta was just a vision, and since then the business has seen great traction with candidates and companies alike. With the climate emergency and social justice top of mind, Otta has a huge opportunity to connect a generation of thoughtful job seekers with mission-driven companies. Now is the decade to bring a truly candidate-first job search experience to the masses.”
Since launching in January 2020 Otta says it has gone from 1,000 applications sent per month to more than 5,000 every day, although this would of course be dwarfed by much larger jobs sites.
The startup says it will now expand its American presence with an on-the-ground Commercial team, and double the Product and Engineering team in London.
Otta says that while it competes with LinkedIn, “they’re not giving candidates what they actually want and need,” a spokesperson told me.
“We’re candidate-first, meaning we’re building for the job seekers, not the recruiters or the companies. Candidates don’t want to wade through irrelevant job recommendations or see only the job ads bidding the highest price. They don’t want to fight off endless recruiters or have to research whether the business has good diversity stats. They want all of the best companies in one place, they want to be matched with roles according to their values + ambitions, and they want all of the info they need to make a decision,” they added.