{"id":8897,"date":"2023-08-24T14:34:12","date_gmt":"2023-08-24T14:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/?p=8897"},"modified":"2023-08-24T14:34:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-24T14:34:12","slug":"weekday-raises-2-2-million-as-it-pledges-to-take-on-linkedin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/24\/weekday-raises-2-2-million-as-it-pledges-to-take-on-linkedin\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekday Raises $2.2 Million As It Pledges To Take On LinkedIn"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Weekday founders Amit Singh, Anubhav Malik and Chetan Dalal<\/p>\n

<\/fbs-accordion>Weekday<\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Could a tiny start-up in the online talent sourcing market really take on the industry giant LinkedIn? The founders of Weekday<\/a> believe they can survive and prosper in this David versus Goliath story \u2013 and so do investors in their $2.2 million seed round, which the company is announcing today.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2021 by Amit Singh, Anubav Malik and Chetan Dalal, Weekday is targeting a single industry as it builds its business \u2013 albeit a large and lucrative one in software engineering. The company has already built a database of more than 800,000 engineers, a pool from which it claims recruiters will have a better chance of finding the best talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to solve the problem of lack of trust in the hiring process,\u201d explains Singh. \u201cWe believe that a recruiting platform with references as the cornerstone is the solution that solves all these problems \u2013 we are what LinkedIn should have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

By \u201cproblems\u201d, Singh means that while recruiters appear to be well-served by rival platforms that offer access to millions of would-be candidates for roles, identifying the best people on those platforms is often challenging. In particular, candidates\u2019 references may be misleading, because they\u2019ve often sought them out themselves.<\/p>\n

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Weekday\u2019s alternative is a different type of model. It invites software engineers to sign up and to connect their \u201csocial graph\u201d \u2013 essentially their LinkedIn networks and other contacts. The platform can then search for engineers who match a particular recruiter\u2019s needs; Weekday then approaches the closest contacts of those who make the shortlist and seeks references for them. \u201cThe quality of candidates is much superior to any job board-based platform,\u201d Singh insists.<\/p>\n

His analogy is to internet shopping, where many customers will not buy without first reading the dispassionate reviews of products posted by other shoppers. Recruiters should be able to read the same sort of reviews when looking for candidates for their roles, Singh argues. But currently, they seek out references only once they\u2019re very close to making an appointment \u2013 and even then, those references typically come from people lined up by the candidate, rather than being provided independently.<\/p>\n

Weekday\u2019s approach therefore offers the potential for recruiters to connect with the best candidates for their roles more quickly. \u201cWe have a ready pool of users willing to give references; that, along with automated reference forms being sent on WhatsApp and by email, makes reference collection very easy and fast,\u201d Singh explains. \u201cFor most candidates, we are able to get quality references within 24 hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s an interesting approach, particularly in the software engineering sector where the battle for talent is hot and remote working is becoming the norm. Recruiters are racing to hire good-quality engineers but need to be sure they\u2019re talking to the best candidates, many of whom they will never meet face to face.<\/p>\n

Singh, Malik and Dalal have spent the past two years refining the product and building their database, but have now begun to sell Weekday\u2019s services. So far, around 120 companies have used it to recruit staff \u2013 participation on the platform is free, with recruiters only paying a fee if they hire through the company.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a humble start given the scale of the main competition. But Weekday, backed by the Y Combinator accelerator, thinks it has a shot at winning plenty of business from the likes of LinkedIn. \u201cWe believe that in order to build a truly powerful hiring platform; social data and references need to be the centrepiece,\u201d Singh says. \u201cIt is the back-channel references which end up being the most important ones.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s target market is essentially any business looking to hire software engineers, but the founders believe start-ups making their first engineer hires \u2013 and in need of support rapidly \u2013 are likely to be early adopters. If the model works, moreover, there is no reason why it cannot be applied in other areas of the technology sector, or even to support recruitment in completely different industries.<\/p>\n

For now, that\u2019s some way off, but the $2.2 million of seed funding raised by the business speaks to the faith that investors have in its potential. The funding round was led by Venture Highway, with participation from a number of angel investors. \u201cWhile most other company functions, including design, product, dev tools and sales have seen breakthrough products in the last five to six years, recruitment still hasn’t,\u201d says Venture Highway\u2019s Aviral Bhatnagar. \u201cLinkedIn is a 20-year-old company that continues to be the defacto platform for recruitment \u2013 we are partnering with Weekday as they try to change that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Weekday founders Amit Singh, Anubhav Malik and Chetan Dalal Weekday Could a tiny start-up in the online talent sourcing market really take on the industry giant LinkedIn? The founders of Weekday believe they can survive and prosper in this David versus Goliath story \u2013 and so do investors in their $2.2 million seed round, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/imageio.forbes.com\/specials-images\/imageserve\/64e63c700d705993ce4af6bd\/0x0.png?format=png&crop=548,257,x26,y0,safe&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8899,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8897\/revisions\/8899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imsfund.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}