- Searchlight — a talent intelligence platform powered by hard data that measure the soft skills that can make or break the quality of hire — announced that it has closed a Series A funding round of $17 million. These are the details.
Searchlight — a talent intelligence platform powered by hard data that measure the soft skills that can make or break the quality of hire — announced that it has closed a Series A funding round of $17 million led by Founders Fund with participation from Accel, Shasta Ventures, Kapor Capital, Operator Collective, and prominent angel investors including current and former Heads of People and Talent at companies like Airbnb, Atlassian, Coda, Confluent, and Plaid. The lead investor, Founders Fund General Partner Keith Rabois, has also joined Searchlight’s board.
Searchlight also announced the launch of its talent intelligence platform designed to align hiring teams to assess and retain great hires — which gives companies the ability to measure and improve the quality of hire.
The company connects candidates’ reference and self-assessment data to post-hire outcomes, creating a powerful hiring and retention engine that provides prescriptive insights. And using the platform, organizations can confidently hire faster, mitigate bias and retain a stronger workforce. Customers who have used the platform in beta to hire thousands of candidates over the past year saw a 45% improvement in retention and 40% faster time-to-fill.
The challenges of the pandemic, the Great Resignation, and a talent shortage across levels and industries have caused retention rates to plummet. And it’s taking longer to hire as candidates rethink their lives and work.
Many talented job candidates have been overlooked or lost in the clutter of hiring platforms; 82% of executives surveyed* admit that existing screens like interviews and work samples are causing them to miss good candidates. But nearly half of all hires fail within 18 months and recruiters say that Quality of Hire is their top priority in 2022.
KEY QUOTES:
“The most successful companies understand that their business performance is tied to hiring quality and retention. Searchlight is eliminating guesswork through data, leading to incredible results for their customers. I wish I had this platform as I built my teams at Square, Paypal, and Linkedin, and recommend all companies use Searchlight.”
— Keith Rabois, General Partner at Founders Fund and Searchlight Board Member
“Searchlight’s data and actionable advice lets us customize sourcing, efficiently identify the best-matched candidates, and personalize onboarding. With Searchlight, we’ve created a hiring system in one quarter that took more than one year at my previous company, saved $3M+ in recruiting costs, and generated $3M+ in increased revenue. Searchlight creates a virtuous cycle between great employee performance and great business performance that brings in more high performers.”
— Chad Herring, Chief People Officer of Snapdocs
“We’re taking the guesswork out of hiring so that companies can crush biases and build high-performing, diverse, and inclusive organizations. Our data leads to more opportunities for talent left behind by traditional hiring practices. Searchlight saves our customers tens of millions of dollars by reducing turnover, which also means a reduced number of employees who go through life setbacks when they find themselves in the wrong job. We believe that the only way to create a quality workforce is to start from a foundation of diversity and inclusion.”
— Kerry Wang, co-founder and CEO of Searchlight
“Searchlight has become the foundation of our talent analytics framework that finally bridges the gap between pre- and post-hire data to improve quality of hire. For each hire, Searchlight gives my managers the insights to jumpstart onboarding and speed up the time to productivity. From a company standpoint, I can finally gain prescriptive hiring insights that improve outcomes for my recruiters, managers, and company’s bottom line.”
— Shauna Geraghty, Talkdesk Senior Vice President of Talent
