LinkedIn has made another acquisition to build out its big data recruitment business. It’s acquired Careerify, a startup based out of Toronto, Canada, that focuses on software for businesses to hire people.
Two of Careerify’s products — an employer branding software product (intended to help companies appear more attractive to prospective candidates) and “internal mobility software” (fancy naming for internal hiring software) — are being closed down. But a third product — Careerify’s employee referral software — will remain open to existing customers. However, LinkedIn will not take on any new users.
LinkedIn is not providing any information about whether it plans to revive the first two products that have been sunset, or how it plans to evolve the one that is currently live.
This is an acquisition, not an acquihire, and the company already had some very well known large and small organizations using the product including Good Technology and SunGard.
The referral software developed by Careerify fits right into LinkedIn’s bigger strategy as a business, which parses and crunches data that people input into their profiles (or is otherwise associated with them) to come up with synergies with other users, potential jobs and other professional connections.
In the case of Careerify, it uses an employee’s social connections — these days via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook — to figure out who in an individual’s network might be suitable for a job opening in that employee’s place of business.
The problem that Careerify is solving is fairly common, and possibly one that you have come across yourself: when job openings come up at your office, and you get that email asking if you have anyone to refer as a potential candidate, you may be too busy to answer, or just unable to think of anyone suitable. The software from Careerify essentially automates that process — not unlike how LinkedIn automates a lot of its reading and connection suggestions to you today.
But while Careerify may be solving a problem, it had a problem of its own: how to best position itself for future growth in a sea of social media companies and recruitment specialists that are growing bigger and bigger. That’s where LinkedIn comes in, CEO and founder Harpaul Sambhi wrote in a blog post announcing the deal:
“We decided to join LinkedIn due to what we lacked – massive scale,” he said. “More than 30,000 companies across the globe leverage LinkedIn for recruitment, and with more than 347 million members, LinkedIn offers an opportunity to make a much larger impact on job seeking and hiring.”
Three are people joining the company, Sambhi and two software engineers, Luthfur Chowdhury and Prashant Viswanathan, who will all become a part of LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions Team. (One other person is not joining.) The three are now working out of LinkedIn’s Toronto office, but they will soon be relocating to Mountain View.
Terms are not being disclosed.
