Jobvite raises $15M for social recruiting

The company is backed by Trident Capital, CMEA Capital, and ATA Ventures

Social recruiting solutions provider Jobvite announced Tuesday that it has landed $15 million in a Series C round of funding led by Trident Capital, with help from existing investors CMEA Capital and ATA Ventures. This brings the company’s total raised to $30.5 million since 2007.

With the management team’s extensive background with Yahoo’s HotJobs, Jobvite has proven itself to be an instant hit. In just two years, Jobvite’s revenue has grown 600%, and it has added a bevy of fast-rising companies to its list of clients, including Groupon, Zappos, Twitter, Etsy, Starbucks, TiVo, Demand Media, and others.

The company’s social recruiting solutions outfit every employee of a client company with a Jobvite account and the ability to share job openings with friends, which, as the company notes, typically translates to higher quality workers who fit the company culture and stay on the job longer.

The company’s products include Jobvite Source, a sourcing application that helps companies find talent through employee referrals, social networks, and the Web; and Jobvite Hire, a recruiting and applicant tracking platform that delivers recruitment marketing, a Facebook app for recruiting, and analytics to track applicants and recruitment spend.

And Jobvite’s clients are reporting big improvements in their hiring processes. Shutterfly says that employee referrals now account for 31% of all hiring, and that referral applicants are hired at 12 times the rate of applicants from other sources. Additionally, TiVo reported that in the three years it has been a Jobvite client, the company has seen referral hires jump from 23% to 39%.

“Jobvite is the clear leader in social recruiting,” said John Moragne, co-founder and Senior Managing Director of Trident Capital, in a statement. “Many key online categories are being transformed by social media and Jobvite is leading the disintermediation of the multi-billion dollar recruitment space having built a company with considerable revenue and traction during a challenging economic climate.”

Moragne will be joining CMEA Capital Partner Saad Khan on Jobvite’s Board of Directors.

Cold calls and emailed resume submissions have clearly gone the way of dial-up. Social media is the new hiring tool. Last week, Branchout, a professional networking and recruiting service for Facebook, closed an $18 million round of funding. Branchout allows Facebook users to create professional Facebook profiles, locate friends with connections to companies, and search and apply for jobs via companies’ Facebook pages. 

Image source: Jobvite.com