Hiration startup raises $3m to offer its affordable, AI-powered resume-building platform to job seekers

Hiration, the platform that offers world class resources that makes it easy for qualified candidates to create the perfect resumes and find their dream role, announced it has raised $3 million in seed funding from Prime Venture Partners, Venture Highway and Y Combinator, among others, to support further hiring and growth.

Hiration's technology flips the script on today's applicant tracking systems, leveraging AI and machine learning to help job seekers build and optimize their resumes to ensure that they rise to the top - providing a crucial leg up to applicants vying for the most competitive companies and roles. The company's AI-powered career ecosystem also supports job seekers throughout the different stages of finding a job, including drafting cover letters, optimizing their LinkedIn profiles, creating digital portfolios and helping them prepare for the interviews.

Founded in 2017 by Aditya Sharma and Anish Raj Sikka, Hiration leverages technology previously only available to recruiters and puts it into the hands of job seekers. The platform helps qualified candidates write an effective resume that is customized to ensure that it passes through today's tech-powered candidate review tools and gets in hands of those doing the hiring. While resume-building is at the core of the platform, Hiration also helps job seekers at every step of the process, from drafting an effective cover letter, to creating digital portfolios and preparing for interviews in their chosen field.

Anish Raj Sikka, Co-founder and CEO, Hiration: "Aditya and I met in business school, where we were given intensive training on the art of finding a job, like networking, writing great resumes, and preparing for job interviews. But when we were hiring for roles at our last startup, we saw firsthand how today's hiring technology is tilted in favor of the companies doing the hiring. We realized while people invest time and money learning the skills for their jobs, they aren't taught how to excel at the hiring process. We saw an opportunity to offer the same technology to job candidates, offering tools to those who may otherwise have been overlooked because they didn't have access to the same resources or training."

"Over the past 3 years, we've analyzed millions of job postings and resumes to identify signals that determine whether a candidate is suitable for a job or not. Making sense of data at this scale has only become possible with the recent advancements in natural language processing and deep learning. Using OpenAI's GPT-3 and other in-house machine learning models, we've developed a career assistant that guides job seekers in real time, while they are crafting their resume or preparing for their interview. As a result, our users end up getting better jobs in less time than they otherwise would have," added Sharma.

The company has partnered with over 80 universities and nonprofits specializing in workforce development, including Stanford University, University of Idaho, Brandeis University, San Diego State University, Indiana University–Purdue University (IUPUI), the Southwestern Oregon Workforce Investment Board (SOWIB), and others, to offer new graduates and job seekers a leg up in an unpredictable post-pandemic hiring environment.

Nate Marsh, Director, Must Ministries: "During my years in workforce development, I have constantly searched for automated resume software that offered current resume formats, easy use, intuitive creation and innovative user experience. It was always a challenge locating any software of quality and most times a disappointing experience that became truly exhausting. That all changed with Hiration. It is simply the best, most enjoyable, modern, cutting-edge and cost-effective resume creation experience I have seen. The additional features and use of AI is 'tech at its finest'. Hiration goes far beyond other resume-generation software and, dare I say, even makes resume building fun."

While resume writing, optimization and design is the core of Hiration's offering, the platform's customized flow also offers job seekers additional tools like a cover letter builder, online portfolios, LinkedIn SEO optimization, and comprehensive interview preparation.

Amit Somani, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners: "Artificial intelligence will have as much if not more impact on our lives than even the internet. Hiration is using AI and ML to help job seekers auto-magically create resumes from scratch with little to no human intervention. Not only are these resumes much easier to create, they are in fact better than ones authored by humans since they are built for humans and software alike that are evaluating them for hiring positions. Hiration dreams of helping job seekers in all aspects of their job search process. They also have an impressive roster of world class universities, job boards and companies using their technology. Prime Ventures is very excited about this missionary set of founders as they transform the hiring market."

Samir Sood, Founder & Partner, Venture Highway: "While multiple players are solving for recruiters, we have not come across platforms which are focused on candidates and meaningfully solve for the entire candidate employment journey. Hiration is building a uniquely powerful, customised career platform for job seekers which is candidate first and tech-first, starting with an automated resume offering. There are strong tailwinds for this model due to the pandemic. We are very excited to partner with the Hiration team as they continue to disrupt the employment vertical." 

www.hiration.com