Humanly has raised more money to drive growth for its HR software that helps companies screen job candidates, schedule interviews, automate initial communication, perform reference checks, and more.
The company raised $ 4.3 million in a round led by Zeal Capital Partners, with participation from Spark Growth Ventures, Basecamp Fund, Moneta Ventures, and a group of angels including Payscale founder Joe Giordano and Aditi Consulting founder, Pradeep Singh. Total funding to date is $ 5.3 million.
Humanly has seen its income increase six times in the last year. It’s tapping into the tailwinds of companies that are rethinking their talent acquisition strategies amid the pandemic-driven shift to remote working and increasing attention to diversity, said CEO and co-founder Prem Kumar, a former Microsoft employee. and Tinypulse who helped launch the startup in August 2018 with Andrew Gardner and Bryan Leptich.
Humanly technology aims to reduce the time it takes to find talent and provide a better experience for potential new hires. The software uses progressive profiles, similar to a marketing tool, as a way to quickly understand a candidate’s intent and background. For companies that receive thousands of applications per week, Humanly provides a way to expand their network and assess people at scale.
Once a company engages with a candidate, Humanly automates repetitive conversations at the “top of the funnel” before a human steps in to complete the hiring process.
“We are replacing the time that a recruiting coordinator would spend doing hundreds of these phone screens, and making it a much faster period of time,” Kumar said. “And then we are helping the human being to be better in the next step.”
Technology can help eliminate bias by hiding a candidate’s name, gender, years of experience, and more. It also looks at how companies are interacting with different candidates. For example, the company recently helped a client identify that junior male candidates were receiving seven minutes of additional speaking time compared to junior candidates.
“Let’s make those talks more equitable,” Kumar said.
Kumar said the company focuses on building AI from an ethical point of view. He said the 10-person team at Humanly is roughly 50% diverse with both gender and ethnicity, “which helps us build products that represent our customers.”
He humanely graduated from Y Combinator in 2019. His clients include Microsoft, Seattle Storm, Moss Adams, and more.
Other Seattle-area startups using technology to improve the talent acquisition process include Karat, a technical interview platform, and Textio, which helps companies write better job listings.
