Searchlight, a talent intelligence platform powered by hard data that measures the soft skills that can make or break quality of hire, announced today that it has closed a Series A funding round of $17 million led by Founders Fund with participation from Accel, Shasta Ventures, Kapor Capital, Operator Collective, and prominent angel investors including current and former Heads of People and Talent at companies like Airbnb, Atlassian, Coda, Confluent, and Plaid. Lead investor, Founders Fund General Partner Keith Rabois, has also joined Searchlight’s board.
The company also announced the launch of its talent intelligence platform designed to align hiring teams to assess and retain great hires — finally giving companies the ability to measure and improve quality of hire. Searchlight connects candidates’ reference and self-assessment data to post-hire outcomes, creating a powerful hiring and retention engine that provides prescriptive insights. Using the platform, organizations can confidently hire faster, mitigate bias and retain a stronger workforce. Customers who have used the platform in beta to hire 1000s of candidates over the past year saw a 45% improvement in retention and 40% faster time-to-fill.
The challenges of the pandemic, the Great Resignation, and a talent shortage across levels and industries have caused retention rates to plummet. It’s taking longer to hire as candidates rethink their lives and work. Many talented job candidates have been overlooked or lost in the clutter of hiring platforms; 82% of executives surveyed* admit that existing screens like interviews and work samples are causing them to miss good candidates. Meanwhile, nearly half of all hires fail within 18 months* and recruiters say that Quality of Hire is their top priority in 2022**.
“The most successful companies understand that their business performance is tied to hiring quality and retention,” said Keith Rabois, General Partner at Founders Fund and Searchlight Board Member. “Searchlight is eliminating guesswork through data, leading to incredible results for their customers. I wish I had this platform as I built my teams at Square, Paypal, and Linkedin, and recommend all companies use Searchlight.”
Almost 90% of mishires happen because of a soft skills mismatch.*** Searchlight’s ability to predict, measure and improve soft skills alignment is driving quality of hire at companies like Udemy, Talkdesk, and Zapier. Searchlight places a specific focus on measuring competencies, culture alignment, strengths and gaps, and career interests. Searchlight’s platform connects behavioral data to employee outcomes so organizations have a holistic solution to measure and improve quality of hire.
“Searchlight’s data and actionable advice lets us customize sourcing, efficiently identify the best-matched candidates, and personalize onboarding. With Searchlight, we’ve created a hiring system in one quarter that took more than one year at my previous company, saved $3M+ in recruiting costs, and generated $3M+ in increased revenue. Searchlight creates a virtuous cycle between great employee performance and great business performance that brings in more high performers,” says Chad Herring, Chief People Officer of Snapdocs.
“We’re taking the guesswork out of hiring so that companies can crush biases and build high-performing, diverse, and inclusive organizations,” said Kerry Wang, co-founder and CEO of Searchlight.