Welcome to Recruiter Roundup, a monthly look at the most exciting recruiting and HR industry news.To kick things off, Recruiter.com had the chance to present the findings of our Recruiter Index survey live on CNBC last night. See the video below:
Last month, we reported on the results of our inaugural Recruiter Index® survey, which found that many recruiters felt the worst effects of COVID-19 on hiring would be limited to the immediate term. The results of our second survey, taken during May, suggest those recruiters were right: Average job requirement load per recruiter has risen from 12 to 15, and a clear majority of recruiters across industries — 60.4 percent — believe their job requirement loads will increase in the next 90 days, compared to 38.5 percent who said the same in April. See the full results of our second Recruiter Index® survey here.
Recruiting Industry Investments / M&A Activity
While the pandemic has dampened mergers, acquisitions, and investments to some degree, we’re still seeing a healthy amount of activity in the HR and recruiting technology space — especially for those companies leveraging artificial intelligence. In general, AI-related funding has fared very well throughout the pandemic. VentureBeat notes that U.S.-based AI startups raised $6.9 billion in the first quarter of 2020.
- Remote team engine Terminal acquires AI-powered talent-mapping software ROIKOI
- Distributed talent-enablement platform Oyster raises $4.2 million in seed funding
- HR tech platform Remote raises $11 million in seed funding
- Data-driven workplace culture tech Emtrain raises $8 million in growth capital
- Personality assessment platform Traitify raises $12 million in Series B funding
- HR-focused conversation AI Paradox raises $40 million in Series B funding
- Pay equity leader Syndio announces $7.5 million in funding
- HR tech investment group Timecentric acquires time- and labor-management software Time Rack
- Cloud recruiting platform iCIMS acquires data science company Opening.io
- Digital staffing service Zenjob raises $30 million in Series C funding
Must-Read Reports
Fiscal reports from recruiting giants Heidrick & Struggles and Robert Half offer some interesting insights into how COVID-19 is affecting industry revenues. Hedrick & Struggles saw flat revenue compared to Q1 2019, while Robert Half saw a 3 percent gain. While it remains to be seen how Q2 plays out for these and other firms, it’s heartening that Q1 didn’t prompt precipitous declines.
In other good news, the ASA Staffing Index reports that staffing jobs are starting to recover from the massive dip they took at the beginning of the pandemic. From the end of April to mid-May, staffing jobs saw modest gains for three weeks in a row, a hope-inspiring signal to be sure.
- Unsurprisingly, U.S. unemployment rocketed to 14.7 percent, setting the stage for heretofore unseen hiring surges as the lockdowns begin to ease up
- Okta reports on the fastest-growing apps among remote workers
- Cornerstone Capital urges that upskilling and reskilling may be even more important in the post-pandemic economy
- Curiously, CNBC and SurveyMonkey’s Workforce Happiness Index found employees are actually happier overall than they were before the pandemic; perhaps that’s a sign employers should let remote work continue once the crisis has abated
- Deloitte reports that only 16 percent of business leaders expect to significantly increase investment in the “reinvention of the workforce” over the next three years
- Willis Towers Watson finds nearly half of companies are enhancing healthcare and wellness benefits for employees
- U.S. internship hiring has fallen by half since the start of the pandemic
Company News
Savvy recruiting and staffing firms have been homing in on the pockets of hiring spurred by the pandemic since the earliest days of lockdowns, but we’re now seeing the birth of entire organizations dedicated to COVID-related hiring. See, for example, Contact Tracer Staff, which focuses exclusively on helping U.S. states hire contact tracers. It will be interesting to see how such firms pivot — or don’t — once the crisis has passed.
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- LinkedIn tests new video introduction feature
- Heidrick & Struggles launches new diversity and inclusion practice
- Eightfold.ai and EdCast team up to deliver AI-powered personalized career planning and corporate learning
- On-demand healthcare service Ready Responders partners with crowd-sourced recruiting company Relode to rapidly fill healthcare roles
- Technology services company Zensar launches Humané, an enterprise employee experience management solution
- Recruitment marketing platform Talemetry joins SAP PartnerEdge Program
- Jobvite announces partnership with Ultimate Software providing platform-to-platform integrations
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Are you interested in having your company featured in this recruiting industry report? Send an email to our Editor, matthew@recruiter.com, with your company's news or announcements. Our regular publication, RecruiterToday, also features thought leadership from recruiting and talent acquisition professionals and accepts content contributions.
