Tech job-matching startup raises $3.5 million
STELLARES uses AI to crawl the web and find individuals best matched for jobs, using mix of professional and personal goals; JVP fund led round
Shoshanna Solomon was The Times of Israel's Startups and Business reporter
STELLARES, a startup that is looking to change the way tech companies find talented workers using artificial intelligence, has closed a $3.5 million dollar seed round led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP).
The San Francisco-based startup,which has an R&D center in Israel, was founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs Roi Chobadi and Andy Katz. The company has developed an algorithm based on AI that is the basis of a recruitment platform that helps workers find the best suited jobs for their talent, based on a mix of personal and professional goals.
Stellares is first targeting the engineering market within the US, a $2 billion market, over the next 2-3 years before expanding to the entire tech sector, which creates $10 billion of recruiting fees, JVP said in a statement.
While traditional recruitment platforms generally focus on criteria like job description, salary, and benefits, STELLARES is looking to reshuffle these criteria and “to match talent based on what people today are seeking from their place of employment: work-life balance, professional development goals, impact and fit. This leads to a better match between places of employment and talent,” the statement said.
STELLARES operates under the assumption that places of work have become the center of most peoples’ lives. This is why criteria like work-life balance, social fit, and supervisors’ management styles are important to job seekers. The company’s algorithm crawls the web to find features about both the employers and possible talent, to help create a better match between the two, based on a variety of topics, including hobbies, compatible management approaches, social compatibility, commute time and policies such as bringing pets to the office. A simple chat bot asks them a set of questions and then makes the introductions.
“Our A.I. learns about the candidate talent by crawling the web and NLU-ing (natural language understanding) candidates’ digital footprint and by asking them a set of 15-20 questions about who they are, what’s important to them, and where they’d like to be in their careers,” Roi Chobadi, CEO of STELLARES, said in the statement. “STELLARES – which constantly crawls the web to learn about companies, their development, cultures, etc – presents each user a few tailor-fit opportunities.”
STELLARES also works directly with tech companies, offering them introductions to top tech talent. The company says it also helps recruiters become more efficient, offering a very easy to use dashboard and a high matching accuracy; on average recruiters ask to meet with 60% of the talent presented to them through the platform, the statement said.
“Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our world. Serendipitous results based on this disruptive discipline can be evidenced already in many aspects of our lives. However, some of life’s most critical decisions, such as career choice, remain elusive. This is where Stellares comes in,” Yoav Tzruya, general partner at JVP, said in the statement. “Stellares’s unique approach to matchmaking not only in a quantitative manner, but also matching soft skills, interests, psychological aspects and more, all automatically, using AI, is key to finding the right match for both individuals and recruiting organizations.”
