New Zealand-based Weirdly announced a $1.8 million round of funding for its recruiting platform. Weirdly’s focus is on assessment and selection for primarily customer service roles. The company has been growing on the success of landing and supporting major brands across Australasia and expects the funds to fuel further product and revenue growth.
From the Weirdly Press Release:
13 July, 2020
Weirdly Raises $1.8 Million to build on rapid growth in Australia
Australasian software company, Weirdly, is already soaring as the Australian and NZ
markets start to rebuild.
The HR Tech company has just closed $1.8million in funding, led by NZ investors Punakaiki
Fund Limited, and with K1W1 and NZ growth Capital Partners’ Aspire Fund also
participating. This investment will help clear the way for the next wave of trans-tasman
growth.
“With our exposure to very large retailers, we were initially very worried about the impact of
COVID-19. The pandemic forced us to adjust our approach and as the dust is starting to
settle, growth is looking positive again. This latest investment will help supercharge our
bounce back in the Aussie market.” says Dale Clareburt, CEO and co-founder of Weirdly.
“Right now more people are facing unemployment and retailers are seeing an enormous
volume of applications for every role, so speeding things up, while providing a great
experience, is really important for both the recruiter and the job candidate”
Major Australasian employers like Target, Atlassian and Uber trust Weirdly to help speed up
their hiring, in some cases reducing the recruiting process from weeks to just 48hrs. Weirdly
has driven strong results for clients, with one client reporting their time to shortlist is now
83% faster, and another seeing the quality of candidates improve by 150%. Through
relationships with companies like these, Weirdly has helped over 900,000 people apply for
roles.
“We’re being approached by some really big brands here and internationally who share our
passion for candidate experience and efficiency. We’re excited about building our presence
with these companies in Australia, and what that means for growing Australian and NZ
based teams too”.
Technology is a key focus for growth in Australia and already counts as NZ’s third largest
export sector, so companies like Weirdly finding ways to grow out of this pandemic is an
important part of our trans-tasman economic recovery.
Punakaiki Fund’s Lance Wiggs believes companies like Weirdly are an important player in
that equation, first investing in Weirdly in early 2015. “This Series A round has been on the
agenda for a long time” said Lance Wiggs.
“We were delighted to see Weirdly hit product and market fit in 2019, and for Punakaiki Fund
to be able to contribute capital to extend that run.”
“Dale exemplifies what we like to see in a founder, with a strong sense of mission,
recognised HR-tech thought leadership and customer centric understanding. She is an
inspiring founder and leads by example, forging an inspirational path for many others to
emulate.”
It was this kind of leadership that kept the Weirdly team busy during NZ’s lockdown period.
Alongside their suite of recruitment tools for the customer service sector, they’ve built and
piloted a new platform for one of Australia’s leading retailers. This new solution repurposed
Weirdly’s recruitment products to help the company redeploy staff who had lost jobs as
Covid impacted Australia. It allowed the company to partner with other organisations to help
funnel affected people into new roles.
“I’m really proud of how our team pulled together to spin up this addition to our product suite
over lockdown. It’s enabled us to keep growing, even as the whole world faces a really
uncertain period. And of course, it feels good that we helped a lot of people who were really
hurting due to Covid too.” says Clareburt.
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About Weirdly:
Weirdly makes recruitment software designed to take the headache out of high volume
screening. Built specifically for customer service roles, Weirdly has been used by some of
the world’s biggest brands including Uber, Sodexo, Target and Atlassian. As a full Talent
Platform, Weirdly offers these recruiters instant access to candidates pre-qualified by soft
skills, availability and other relevant information. They manage and screen candidates using
Weirdly’s high volume specific CRM, with automated interview scheduling, comms and
document management. Weirdly is particularly strong at helping large retailers and other
recruiters manage large volumes of early career applicants, with one retailer seeing
acceptance rates for interviewed clients rise to 90%, while also improving their diversity
statistics to well over the national average.
Co-founded in 2014, Weirdly has offices in Auckland and Sydney and customers around the
globe.