Jobandtalent has secured $500 million in equity investment as of December 1, 2021. The funding came from Kinnevik and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, ending its Series E round of fundraising. The workforce marketplace also obtained $75 million from Blackrock for debt financing, providing Jobandtalent with a market value of $2.34 billion.
This funding will help the company expand into new markets, primarily in the U.S. It will also use the funds to increase the size of its sales and tech teams in addition to adding key executive roles over the next two years. Jobandtalent is active in nine markets and actively hiring in both the U.S. and Europe. Its annual growth rate is 130 percent, and its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) has been positive since 2020. Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt has been an early supporter of Jobandtalent, playing a variety of roles in developing the company.
Juan Urdiales and Felipe Navio founded Jobandtalent in 2009. It was originally headquartered in Spain, but it now has headquarters in the U.K. as well. Jobandtalent combines modern online tools with advanced data-matching algorithms to bring employers and job seekers together.
Today’s increasingly fluid economy make Jobandtalent’s online format a valuable tool for both parties, particularly the current pandemic that makes in-person interviews challenging.
Jobandtalent has developed a platform that matches temporary workers with jobs in many sectors, especially e-commerce, logistics, manufacturing and warehousing. Workers using this platform receive many benefits of full-time employment such as vacations, sick pay, retirement funds and health insurance in some markets. In addition to applying for roles, workers can use Jobandtalent to submit contracts and receive payment. Jobandtalent uses a technology that improves these matches over time, leading to higher worker satisfaction and lower attrition rates. Jobandtalent users have an average net promoter score (NPS) of 56 compared to the industry standard of 18.
Urdiales plans to build his firm by leveraging the growing pool of workers. He said in a press announcement, “The Jobandtalent platform has found the right roles at the right companies for more than 100,000 workers in the first 9 months of 2021 alone, providing them with the benefits and security of full time employment.” Urdiales added that his company is able to match workers with jobs at a higher rate than its competitors, despite the tight labor market.
Alejandro Betancourt Lopez has followed his passions in his investments over the past decade, often by embracing a new technology. He has also developed branding strategies for expanding existing businesses, especially on social media. Jobandtalent is currently one of Betancourt’s most important projects, largely due to its innovation in the staffing sector. He was an early supporter of Jobandtalent and is still one of its biggest shareholders.
Navio was running the firm’s daily operations after selling a social media platform called Tuenti to Telefónica for about $100 million. Tuenti was well-known in the Spanish market, making the sale highly newsworthy.
Betancourt invested in Jobandtalent in 2013 when it was still a startup and began looking for additional investors. At this time, Jobandtalent was essentially a job finder application that allowed users to look for jobs by performing a Google search based on criteria they provided. As Betancourt recalls, “So, it [Jobandtalent] was fun. It looked like a great company and, at the time the valuations were made—based on how many subscribers they had—all of that evolved.”
This change was also driven by recent changes in the ways analysts determine a company’s market value. Betancourt relates that market value is currently based on how much an entrepreneur can grow a business by focusing on metrics such as revenue projections, wheel revenues, EBITDA and number of users. These methods reflect a growing awareness that market valuation is a more complex process than analysts previously believed, especially when it comes to predicting whether a new venture will succeed.
Betancourt observed a high degree of interaction between Jobandtalent and its customers at the time he joined, which was one of the factors that attracted him to the company. However, he wanted to change the company’s business model to one he could easily monetize. As a result, Betancourt relaunched the Jobandtalent platform to hire workers directly in addition to just searching for jobs.
Jobandtalent has evolved from a simple job search site to a Workforce-as-a-Service (WaaS) over the last decade. Betancourt has been a major investor in this company during this period in addition to securing other investors and guiding its development. As a result, the $500 million that Jobandtalent has obtained in its latest funding round will help it expand into new and existing markets.
