Cruit, the innovative recruitment referral platform, announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from leading venture capital firm Slingshot Ventures. Other prominent angel investors in the HR industry, including investors from TestGorilla, Rodeo and Workify, also participated in the fundraise.
With the funds, the Amsterdam-based company plans to expand its team, enhance, and accelerate its growth.
Co-founded by Zenno Bruinsma, Thijs Visser, Yuri Sturkenboom, and Steye Kaersenhout in 2021, Cruit helps companies find the best candidates for open positions by turning employees and communities into the #1 source of candidates. People can share jobs, track their referrals, and earn amazing rewards through the app. The platform centralizes, optimizes, and expands referral programs due to super high mobile-only engagement – with an enormous decrease in cost-per-hire. It also helps employers tap into a vast pool of job seekers and significantly improve their hiring process by incentivizing employees and community members to refer qualified candidates.
The startup is on a mission to revolutionize the way companies hire talent. It believes that referrals are the most powerful tool for companies to find the best candidates, and dedicated to leveraging that power to help businesses worldwide build amazing teams. The firm aims to turn employees and communities into a “Cruiter”.
Speaking about the capital raised, Co-founder & CEO of Cruit, Steye Kaersenhout, said:
We’re thrilled to have the support of Slingshot Ventures and these experienced angel investors. Their investment will help us continue to innovate and improve our platform, making it even easier for companies to find the best candidates through employee and community referrals. With their amazing network and knowledge, we can accelerate our sales and product development.
The startup has recently launched its Public app. With this, not only employees can share the jobs and earn €2,000 per hire on average, but anyone who downloaded the Cruit app. This way, companies can expand their referral program by more than 40% and reach unreachable networks.
Adding further about the investment, Marco Pieters, Managing Partner, Slingshot Ventures, said:
We are very excited about working together with Steye and his team. We believe their platform can optimize a key bottleneck in every (growing) business; hiring. By turning everyone literally with a network into a ‘Cruiter’, the platform allows for quicker, higher quality and better-retaining hires.
Cruit claims to have witnessed considerable success as it claims that many businesses have reported better recruiting results and increased employee involvement after using the platform. One of their launching clients was Crisp, an online supermarket.