French startup Welcome to the Jungle is raising a funding round of $8.4 million (€7 million) from XAnge, Bpifrance and Kima Ventures, as well as existing investors Jean-Paul Guisset and Michael Benabou.
Welcome to the Jungle is taking a different approach to job recruitment. The startup isn’t going to find employees for you. Instead, Welcome to the Jungle wants to give you the tools and exposure to get enough inbound applications.
The company started by profiling hundreds of tech companies in Paris. Instead of creating a giant Excel spreadsheet, Welcome to the Jungle works with a video crew, photographers and a writing staff to produce high quality content about your company. Think about it as glossy paper articles with Condé Nast-like production budget.
All of this is pricy. Companies pay for these profiles and get their own page on Welcome to the Jungle’s website. In addition to that, Welcome to the Jungle also produces quarterly magazines for a hundred universities and a thick paper magazine once per year.
And it’s true that Welcome to the Jungle has covered a ton of companies in Paris. When you think about a company name, chances are you can find a profile on Welcome to the Jungle.
Overall, a thousand companies partnered with Welcome to the Jungle. The website now attracts 600,000 unique visitors every month. For engineers, you can now filter depending on your skill set and your technical stack.
In addition to that, the startup has been slowly ramping up its software-as-a-service recruitment platform called Welcome Kit. Imagine somebody reads about your company in Welcome to the Jungle’s magazine and then ends up on a poorly designed job page.
Welcome Kit replaces the “Jobs” link in your website’s footer. The platform lets you list positions, create application forms and track candidates. Basic features are free and you can pay for additional features and branding options.
With today’s funding round, it’s time to look further. The company now wants to expand to another country, which could be Spain. It’s going to be a slow expansion as Welcome to the Jungle needs to put together a local team in each country to create content.
from TechCrunch