Two early stage recruitment tech firms — EnticeLabs and HireVue, both based in Utah — reported this morning that they’ve received investment dollars to finance their growth.
EnticeLabs, whose first product is an online advertising platform, got an infusion of $2 million from a group of investors lead by First Advantage. The company says the money “will be used to accelerate system development, accommodate higher-than-anticipated sales, and build out the infrastructure warranted by the rapidly expanding client base.”
It also gained the expertise of former Monster VP Neal Bruce, who joins its board of directors.
HireVue, which facilitates video interviewing, received a Series A round of funding led by Peterson Ventures joined by The Garber Fund of Penn State University, and others.
The company didn’t say how big the investment is, though it did say the money would be used to expand management, “strengthen market awareness, and make product enhancements.”
Via its Virtual Video Interviews, employers can automatically screen candidates by having them respond on camera over the Internet to prerecorded questions. HireVue also offers two-way video conferencing for live interviews. Both types of interviews are recorded for later review.
With companies counting pennies, there has been an upswing in the use of Internet video for initial candidate interviews. HireVue says it has grown rapidly — 500 percent — in the last year, adding such Fortune 500 clients as Dish Network, CDW, and Murphy Oil. It also partnered with Taleo to make its video interviews accessible from within the company’s software.
HireVue, which competes in an increasingly crowded market for video interviewing, was named HR Product of the Year for 2009 by Human Resource Executive magazine just two weeks ago.
EnticeLabs, in part financed by the people who founded web analytics company Omniture, introduced TalentSeekr more than a year ago to positive reviews. TalentSeekr leverages some of the same principles as Omniture, but for job postings. Besides creating a variety of ad types from a standard job req, the program places the ad, monitors its performance, and makes adjustments on the fly. Recruiters can manually manipulate the process if they want, but the strength of TalentSeekr is that it can improve ad performance all by itself. (A more in-depth description of how it works can be found here.)
The most recent $2 million investment follows an initial $1.3 million. It’s not an official A series, and with the company a bit beyond startup, EnticeLabs is calling it a strategic round. Besides money, the company is also getting the benefit of recruitment industry veteran Neal Bruce, who joins the board as the representative of First Advantage, where he is is senior vice president of product management for First Advantage’s Employer Services segment.
The well-regarded Bruce is a former vice president of the global innovation group at Monster.com, where he worked for 4 1/2 years. He previously was a recruiter for Ernst & Young, and later director of global staffing for PTC before joining Monster in August 2003. He joined First Advantage in May 2008.