Yobs Technologies, the California Based startup, was founded in 2016 by two young European entrepreneurs: Raphael Danilo and Federico Dubini. The company just raised a €280k investment from the members of Italian Angels for Growth – IAG, joining the $2.0M Seed round jointly with Fabio Mondini, cross-border investor and partner of the IAG network.
Yobs worked with the industry’s best psychology departments and leading data scientists to offer an innovative solution in the HR market. The company uses an AI model to predict culture and role fit for new hires, facilitating managers’ decision-making processes.
Research shows a rise in the importance of personality, soft skills, and emotional intelligence in the current automation era. These parameters will be increasingly important to predict candidate and employee performance inside corporations. The Yobs team built an innovative solution that considers more than 400 parameters. The software registers and analyzes facial expression, grammar, and syntax during video interviews. Subsequently, it matches each reading with the company’s specific KPIs, building a prediction score and recommending the best candidates. Some validation studies on actual business cases demonstrate a 62% increase in hiring efficiency, a 45% increase in interview success and a 61% increase in hiring diversity.
Yobs is looking to focus in on the talent acquisition and talent management industries where recent trends show a strong need for digitalization and process optimization. The global market size is $420 billion with the US accounting for $120 billion.
Federico Dubini, Yobs Co-founder stated: “As an Italian entrepreneur working abroad, I am really proud to partner with Italian Angels for Growth. The Italian market represents a large opportunity for growth, considering it is not one of the most digitally developed. Many Italian companies work at a global level and are in urgent need of process optimization to compete internationally. We are sure that, supported by the experience, know-how, and market knowledge of the IAG members, we will have a central role in solving this need. People are the principal asset in every company; our goal is to help companies empower their employees. This means for their entire lifetime, from selection to internal mobility to outplacement. This is all provided by a solution able to capitalize on the value of data.”
“We believe Artificial Intelligence brings an innovative advantage to understanding the value of a candidate’s soft skills during recruitment. Therefore, IAG partners are committed to supporting Yobs’ founders by investing, as well as assisting them with key contacts and strategic know-how in order to speed up their business development.” – Roberto Montadon and Anna de Stefano, IAG partners representing the Yobs investment.
Antonio Leone, President of Italian Angels for Growth announced: “During 2019, IAG already finalized 5 investments totaling €2.1 million. Currently, the team is in the due diligence process of 4 more projects looking to close another €1.5 million. Key to this success is the effort of the group’s angel network, spreading innovation in the Italian SME tier by creating a connection with local startups.
The legal counseling for the operation was carried out by Matteo Daste from the Orrick studio in San Francisco.