Employee referral platform Intrro warms up to $2.2 million in new funding

London/Tbilisi-based Intrro has welcomed a new $2.2 million in a new funding round. The startup uses data science to comb through a company’s wider network and automatically suggests the most promising candidates for open positions as referrals. To date, Intrro has raised $2.8 million.

The facts are undeniable, when it comes to growing a company as fast as possible while attracting and retaining the best talent, referrals are the way to go.

• 88% of employers said that referrals are the #1 best source for above-average applicants
• 82% of employers rated employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best return on investment.
• Referred candidates are 55% faster to hire, compared with employees sourced through career sites.
• Employee referral programs can save companies $3,000 or more per hire.
• After two years, retention of referred employees is 45% compared to 20% from job boards.

And so the list goes on and on. After spending years sourcing and placing talent for high-growth companies at renowned firm Adecco Group, Intrro co-founders Nasser Oudjidane and Neel Shah decided to use the technology solutions being applied to recruitment to turn left, when others turned right. Meaning, instead of a “spray and pray”, spam-laden solution, the duo flipped the coin and made the outreach all the more personal.

Looking at a company’s wider network, Intrro pans for gold and identifies those that are most likely to have some form of connection with existing employees. Enabling (hopefully) content workers to act as recruiters, the company has the added peace of mind that a candidate is simply an unknown responding to a job offer, but rather, someone that an already established employee can vouch for.

“Our customers report a five-fold increase in referral hiring during the first 90 days of usage. Intrro has become a daily habit for recruiting teams both large and small,” says CEO Nasser Oudjidane. The recruiting teams he’s referring to include clients such as Airwallex, Riskified, Faire, Applyboard, and Typeform.

Intrro’s $2.2 million round was led by signals Venture Capital and saw participation from DataFrame Ventures, and Tribe Capital.

"Intrro solves a crucial pain point for customers by providing companies with a systematic approach to referral programs. Its application to talent acquisition is only one of many future use cases. Essentially every business function that has a dealing with the outside world can be enhanced by using employee network data,” concludes signal Venture Capital’s Christian Weniger.