In March, when the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. in earnest, mobile hiring startup JobGet co-founder and CEO Tony Liu was nervous. Small businesses were shutting down. No one was hiring.
“It wasn’t the most optimistic scenario,” Liu said.
But Liu’s anxiety proved to be short-lived. Almost immediately, demand on the JobGet platform soared: The number of job seekers jumped to 60,000 in March from 35,000 in February, our sister publication the Boston Business Journal reported at the time.
Meanwhile, although small businesses were scaling back, large businesses that were considered “essential” by governments were suddenly growing. Wal-Mart, Amazon, Home Depot and others needed workers to keep up with demand. Monthly job postings between March and now have gone up by 400 percent, driven largely by those big-box retailers, Liu said, and traffic on the JobGet platform has grown by 300 percent.
The spring explosion was good timing. JobGet had just quietly closed on a $2.1 million seed round, which it disclosed publicly this week. The round was led by Pillar VC, with participation from Data Point Capital Partners, Crocker Mountain Capital, EO Ventures, Clover Food Lab COO Greg Donoghue and Ginkgo Bioworks’ SVP of corporate development, Anna Marie Wagner.
JobGet is using the funding to expand its reach. Although JobGet has been most active in Massachusetts, it is also growing its presence in Providence, R.I.; the San Francisco Bay Area; New York; Texas; Arizona and Florida. In Providence, JobGet has a dedicated sales force and has expanded its marketing operations to engage with local companies and nonprofit organizations.
“Because of the increase and surge in demand from these large partners, we’ve used the capital to expand nationally,” Liu said. “We’ve seen the [number of] candidates increase across the country.”
The startup, which was founded in 2019, is also in the process of doubling its own team. Liu said JobGet’s current headcount stands at about 10 full-time employees, plus 20 contractors. He hopes to triple the number of full-time staffers by this time next year.
Liu is now eyeing a Series A round in 2021. An increased cash runway could bring JobGet to its ultimate destination: becoming a ubiquitous “mobile-first job platform,” as Liu puts it.
“The way we see the market, if you look at the landscape back in 2015, 20 percent of job applications were submitted through the mobile phone,” Liu said. “Today, 60 to 80 percent of people are doing their applications through the phone, but the job platform itself really hasn’t reacted to that. We want to adapt to the new generation of the job search scene.”
