Applied, a London, UK-based provider of a smart recruitment platform, raised £1.5m seed funding.
The round was led by Blackbird Ventures with participation from Skip Capital, Angel Academe, Giant Leap and Impact Generation Partners, as well as a number of angel investors. They joined existing shareholders, including the Behavioural Insights Team, gender advocate and businesswoman Carol Schwartz, and Wharton Professor Adam Grant.
The company intends to use the funds to strengthen its data science program and the inclusive job description tool.
Started as a project in the Behavioural Insights Team, which was looking to use the latest insights from behavioural science research to transform its recruitment processes and spun out in 2016 by Kate Glazebrook, CEO, Applied uses algorithms to determine how applications are reviewed, to create more job opportunities for people who would otherwise be eliminated from traditional hiring processes.
The system removes irrelevant information from applications such as name, address, hobbies and education (both years and institute) which may introduce bias when reviewing candidates and detract from the detail that really matters to perform the job. Candidates are therefore assessed fairly on what they can do, not what they look like.
Over 50,000 candidates have applied for vacancies through Applied so far. Customers include BCG’s Centre for Public Impact, Frontline, GroupM, Hilton, L.E.K. Consulting, Penguin Random House, the UK Government and Wellcome Trust.
FinSMEs
17/10/2018