Recruitment startup inploi raises £1.35 million as it fixes the world of hiring

Today talent attraction technology scale-up, inploi, announced it raised a £1.35 million round to develop its growth team and accelerate the go-to-market strategy for its SaaS offering ahead of a planned expansion into the US.

inploi was founded in 2016 out of its founders' frustration with the sub-par experience of using legacy HR tech to find and apply for job opportunities. 

Building "Shopify for hiring," the company employs a unique SaaS approach to help hirers source and recruit staff while transforming the candidate's experience — making it as intuitive and frictionless as possible.

And it shows that transformation is possible, pivoting from a marketplace into an enterprise SaaS model coming out of the pandemic, during which it made access to its platform free at a time when front-line workers were being recognised as 'essential' to the economy and harder to find.

The company also emphasises its ability to cater to neuro-divergent audiences with a wide variety of educational and professional backgrounds and skill sets.

Alex Hanson-Smith, inploi's CTPO and co-founder, shared how the company tracks candidate activity to use real performance data to optimise conversion and refine attraction strategies. He explained: 

"We're increasingly using AI to empower humans to focus on the human aspects of hiring, with machines handling the rest. 

We also have a deep commitment to accessibility and fairness: nobody should be barred from opportunities by inaccessible recruitment processes.

Working with our partner accessiBe, our careers hubs and applicant experiences are completely customisable by those with neurodivergence or different abilities, helping to broaden access to a more diverse pool of applicants."

inploi CEO, Matt de le Hey, said: 

"We're grateful to new and existing investors who have backed us as we switch gears from finding product-market fit to scaling. 

Our unique approach of augmenting and modernising existing systems rather than replacing them - in addition to the close relationships we develop with customers as an innovation partner - has yielded extraordinary results, leading to 100% of our customers renewing across multi-year agreements. 

Over a million candidates have already engaged with our platform this year alone, submitting 500,000 applications to 34,000 jobs, filled more quickly with significantly less client spend."

Recruitment industry veterans turned angels Chris Nelson and Julia Ross participated in the round, along with Joshua Nott of Schmidt Futures, Ziyaad Aboobaker, a partner at 10x Value Partners, and others.