Facebook recruiting tool Work4 Labs raises $11M

Company also debuts free product for medium and small businesses

Updated with comments from Work4 Labs

I’ve heard a lot of people say that no one from this generation will be able to run for political office. It used to be that youthful transgressions could be erased or forgotten, as long as nobody from your past came out of the woodwork to tell everyone about the stupid things you did. Now, everything is documented, and saved, and it can all come to bite you. That can even happen when you’re applying for a job.

So scrub all the dirt off your Facebook now, kids, because recruiters are beginning to turn to Facebook and other social media to find people to hire.

On Wednesday, social recruitment company Work4 Labs debuted an expanded suite of products for companies to recruit workers off of Facebook. In addition, it also announced that it raised $11 million in Series A funding. Stéphane Le Viet, CEO and founder of Work 4 Labs, tells VatorNews that the company will use the money to invest in technology to improve its product, but that it will mostly be used to increase marketing and sales. 

Le Viet is also planning on doubling the size of his team, from 20 to 40 employees, within the next six to nine months.

The funding round was led by Matrix Partners and a group of select industry experts, including Yuri Milner, founder of Digital Sky Technologies, Steve Pogorzelski; Yuri Milner, former President of Monster.com; and Hearsay Social co-founder and CEO, Clara Shih. Matrix general partner Dana Stalder has joined the company’s board of directors.

The company uses social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, to help businesses recruit people to come work for them. The app gets permission to scan a users Facebook profile for education and work history. It then matches job openings from its clients to any openings that user may be qualified for.

Le Viet says that there are three ways a company can post jobs: by creating a jobs section on their Facebook page, by promoting them in users' newsfeed through posts, or through Facebook's ad system, where they will either be displayed on the right side of the screen, or appear as sponsored stories on mobile.

“Work4 Labs was founded on a simple idea: recruitment is an inherently social activity, and recruiters require new tools to take advantage of powerful networks like Facebook and Twitter,” the company says on its website.

“Our flagship product, Work for Us, allows companies of all sizes to create a customizable, social career site on Facebook.  Other award-winning products include the first statistically-optimized Facebook job ads platform and a social referral system.”

By expanding its suite of products, Work4 Labs is making its popular Work For Us product free for small and medium sized companies, which can, despite not having the same resources as larger companies, still build up a strong presence on Facebook.

With the free version of the product, these businesses can launch corporate pages on Facebook, and post jobs openings. They will also be about to use Facebook’s advertising system to target applicants, and to match job openings to the Facebook friends of their employees, if the friends give permission to do so. They would be notified of the openings by their friends. 

Le Viet says that there are two things businesses using the free version cannot do. They are not allowed to ad any company branding, such as banners or videos. They also cannot link to any other career sites they may operate.

This doesn't really matter though, Le Viet says, since for small business this is most likely the only career page they have.

While he says that Work4 Labs has no direct competitors, there are other employee recruitment companies out there, most notably Monster. What sets Work4 Labs apart is the social integration, which Monster is attempting, but they do not have specialists in both recruiting and social. Work4 Labs does.

San Francisco-based Work4 Labs was founded in June 2010. It currently has over 17, 000 customers in over 50 countries, including Anheuser Busch, Ben and Jerry’s, Kate Spade, VMWare, SAP, Gap, General Motors, L’Oréal and UPS. 

The company has seen 300% revenuue growth over the past year, and is going up even faster in terms of users. In the past year, the company has gone from 5,000 clients to 17,000, and the year is not even over. Le Viet says that he expects clients to be anywhere from 20,000 to 25,000 by the end of the year.