The hiring course of has lengthy been criticized for its inefficiency and opacity. Candidates spend hours filling out functions and submitting cowl letters, solely to finish up with one thing like a black field. Generative AI will solely additional confuse issues, with employers more and more counting on AI-powered screening methods to sift via the overwhelming variety of submissions.
Stockholm-based startup Fika Jobs thinks there’s a greater approach. The corporate is constructing a video-first recruiting platform that mixes AI interviewing brokers with short-form video profiles, creating one thing like a cross between LinkedIn and TikTok. Somewhat than relying solely on resumes, candidates full an AI-powered interview designed to showcase their persona and communication abilities.
Fika Jobs introduced a $4 million pre-seed spherical on Tuesday. The funding might be used to proceed creating the platform, develop the group, and put together for a broader launch later this 12 months.
For job seekers, the method begins by connecting to your LinkedIn profile. Fika’s AI evaluations candidates’ backgrounds and generates personalised interview questions. Candidates then full an roughly 10-minute video interview with an AI agent, presently powered by Google’s Gemini mannequin.
After the interview, Fika routinely converts your solutions into quick video clips and compiles them into your profile. Somewhat than making use of to each new function, candidates preserve an up-to-date profile so employers can spot and revisit new alternatives as they come up.
The concept was born when co-founders and brothers Jakob Dubois (CEO) and Alexander Dubois (CTO) had been constructing their earlier startup.
“Once we had been constructing[social app]Gaff, we had been spending quite a lot of time recruiting and candidates’ resumes weren’t very spectacular, so we nearly obtained handed over,” Jakob Dubois advised newsweblatest. “Anyway, we ended up speaking to him and inside minutes his grit, drive and ambition had been evident. He is precisely the form of individual we needed to rent.”
This expertise satisfied the founders that a number of the traits that employers worth most are tough to seize on paper.
In contrast to most of its rivals (like Alex, Maki, and Mercor, amongst others) which can be centered on serving to employers use AI to supply, display, and match candidates extra effectively, Fika is constructing a platform the place candidates can preserve video-first profiles and employers can browse a pool of expertise that has already been interviewed and evaluated by AI.
If profitable, Fika Jobs will enable employers to evaluate communication abilities and cultural match early within the hiring course of, complementing conventional resume and utility evaluations. This strategy could also be significantly useful for early-career professionals or candidates from non-traditional backgrounds whose potential is just not at all times apparent from their resumes alone.
In fact, video profiles comprise an actual threat of bias, which can be price being conscious of. When employers are capable of see a candidate’s race, age, gender, look, and accent earlier than evaluating their {qualifications}, they open the door to discrimination that resumes, for all their flaws, at the very least partially masks. There is a purpose some corporations are shifting to blind resume screening.
The platform is scheduled to start early entry to candidates this week, with a broader public rollout deliberate for this fall. The corporate will concentrate on Sweden first earlier than increasing internationally. Fika’s group is presently small, however expects to have round 10 staff by the tip of the 12 months.
Greater than 100 corporations are on the ready record, the founders stated, however they declined to say which of them. Individually, it stated greater than 50 corporations have examined the platform, together with Loads Labs, SICS.ai, Kognity and Rebtel.
Job seekers can use the platform without cost. Employers don’t pay something upfront, however Fika receives 10% of a candidate’s first 12 months’s wage upon profitable rent. (The corporate notes that that is decrease than the 20% to 30% referral charges that conventional recruiters and headhunters typically cost.)
The spherical was led by Luminar Ventures, with participation from Alliance VC and King co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, the duo finest identified for creating the hit cell recreation Sweet Crush.
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