Germany-based intrro announced a $2.2 million Seed Round of venture capital for its employee referral recruiting tech. This brings its total raised to $2.8 million. The round was led by signals Venture Capital.
intrro was launched in 2020 by two ex-Adecco staffers to address what they claim is the “discrepancy” they discovered “that only 7% of applications come from referrals, but more than 30% of hires do.” Increasing the number and conversions of employee referrals has been the impetus behind so many recruiting tech startups that have entered the market since the late 90s. From recruitment marketing approaches to job board marketplaces, trading on the currency of referrals is a well-trodden path of entry for recruiting tech.
A glance at intrro’s website quickly reveals that its approach is one of mining employees’ networks for “hidden employee referrals” based on “personas” with “star ratings” from employees that lead to “warm intros.” They offer employers the promise to “Deep dive into your co-workers’ hidden memory to discover the rockstars from their past.”
From purely a workflow perspective, this makes loads of sense. The challenge the market has historically had with this approach is the employees’ willingness, or lack thereof, to have their LinkedIn and other connections constantly mined for recruiting outreach. When employees are happy, they do want to help their companies succeed, hiring the best people to come work with them. However, they usually want to be in control of their personal networks and are selective about making that recommendation. Personal relationships are, well, personal and I suspect most employees don’t want their employers to be “deep-diving into their memory.”
All of that said, early traction is almost guaranteed for a startup with the promise of making recruiting employee referrals easier. It’s getting to scale where see them stumble. intrro might be one to watch.
$13.7 billion was invested globally in work tech through Q3 2021 across 299 deals. WorkTech Market Insiders can access insights and analysis of all of the deals in our Q3 report with a free membership.
Source: Intrro | We’ve raised $2.2m to help more companies recruit through referrals
