Israeli-American start-up hoping to revolutionize recruitment raises $3.5m

Start-up targeting recruitment industry initially focusing on $2 billion engineering market in the United States.

OCTOBER 23, 2018 10:00

Updated: OCTOBER 23, 2018 17:06

Job seekers and recruiters gathered at TechFair in Los Angeles (photo credit: MONICA ALMEIDA/REUTERS) — Job seekers and recruiters gathered at TechFair in Los Angeles

(photo credit: MONICA ALMEIDA/REUTERS)

Stellares, an Israeli-American start-up uniquely combining artificial intelligence with talent recruitment, has raised $3.5 million in an initial round of funding led by Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP), the company announced Tuesday.

Founded in 2016 by Roi Chobadi and Andy Katz, Stellares’s artificial intelligence-based algorithm provides a platform to accurately identify matches between the personal and professional goals of employees and possible employers.

Currently focused on the engineering market in the United States, worth $2 billion in recruitment fees, Stellares intends to expand its platform to the entire US technology sector in the next two to three years – worth approximately $10b.

Unlike other recruitment platforms, Stellares seeks to match employees based on more than basic criteria including job description, salary and benefits. Instead, it also takes into account work-life balance, professional development goals, management approaches and social fit. It will even consider the company’s attitude toward bringing pets to the office.

“Our artificial intelligence 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 would like to be in their careers,” said Chobadi, the CEO of Stellares.

“Stellares, which constantly crawls the web to learn about companies, their development, cultures, etc., presents each user a few tailor-fit opportunities.”

Chobadi is a graduate of Tel Aviv University, Stanford Graduate School of Business and the IDF’s elite intelligence unit 8200.

The company says that recruiters ask to meet with 60% of the talent presented to them through the platform.

“Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our world. Serendipitous results based on this disruptive discipline can be evidenced already in many aspects of our lives,” Yoav Tzruya, general partner at JVP, said.

“However, some of life’s most critical decisions, such as career choice, remain elusive. This is where Stellares comes in.”

JVP, a Jerusalem-based venture capital fund founded in 1993 by Dr. Erel Margalit, has raised $1.3 billion across eight funds and invests in early- through growth-stage companies in a range of industries. It has built more than 120 companies and facilitated 12 initial public offerings on the Nasdaq exchange.

“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 artificial intelligence, are key to finding the right match for both individuals and recruiting organizations,” said Tzruya.