Sydney-based Hatch raises $7 million for its AI-powered jobs marketplace

Sydney-based startup Hatch has revealed plans to scale its AI-powered jobs marketplace for gen Z job seekers after announcing on Monday that it has closed an oversubscribed $7 million seed funding round.

The capital raised will be used to support Hatch’s expansion nationwide and globally and invest further in best-in-class matching technology and a candidate-centric user experience for the platform, as well as onboarding more employers and candidates.

The $7 million funding round was led by early-stage investor Rampersand, with several other major Australian venture funds participating in the round, including Alberts Impact Ventures, Aura Ventures, Jelix Ventures, and Investible, as well as existing private investors including former Australia Post boss Ahmed Fahour.

Founded by The Iconic co-founder Adam Jacobs and Zip co-founder Chaz Heitner in 2017 and launched three years later, Hatch has grown at 20% month-on-month for the past two years as it gains market share in what it says is a 28 billion market for hiring gen Y/Z employees. 

Today, Hatch has a community of over 150,000 candidates and more than 120 leading Australian companies use the jobs marketplace powered by AI matching, with over 150,000 applications submitted on the platform.

Co-founder Adam Jacobs told SmartCompany that there were four key areas that Hatch will be directing the new funding towards.

“We’ll be investing more into our matching technology,” he explains. 

“We build our own AI predictive models here at Hatch and we’ll be investing into continuing to increase the sophistication of those models to produce better and better matches for young people and for employers. 

“The second is we’ll be investing more into the user experience of the platform. People often say that Hatch doesn’t feel like a job board, it feels like a community and that’s exactly how we want it to feel. 

“When young people use the platform, we want them to be able to get to know employers beyond just a job ad. So we’ll be introducing more features to bring both candidates and employers to life.”

Thirdly, Jacobs says Hatch will be investing in growing its own team, too.

“We’re still a fairly small team, less than 20 people, in terms of the progress we’ve made,” he says.

“We’ll be growing the team, especially our technology team. We will be hiring for machine learning and AI talent as well as a range of software engineering talent. 

Finally, Hatch is focusing on geographic expansion, adds Jacobs.

“We’ve been really focused on Sydney so far. We’ve seen a lot of growth in Sydney and so now’s the right time to start expanding Hatch nationwide, so that young people right across the country can use a platform to find work that’s going to be a meaningful match for them.”

Beyond CVs

The Hatch platform is closer to social media platforms than traditional resume-based job boards.

This is because the AI-powered matching platform takes the skills, values and motivations of job professionals into account when recommending a role and enables employers to share more about their teams and attract candidates who fit.

Some of the employers using Hatch include Woolworths, Airtasker, Uber, News Corp, Nine, Qantas, Hello Fresh, Hnry, and Domain.

Hatch has a community of over 150,000 candidates and more than 120 leading Australian companies use the jobs marketplace powered by AI matching. Source: Supplied.

Jacobs says the goal at Hatch is to build a global platform.

“Obviously, there’s young people right across the world trying to figure out what work is right for them,” he says. 

“But we’re a marketplace and when you’re a marketplace, you’ve got to grow one segment, one geography, at a time because in each segment, we’ve got to make sure that there’s enough companies and enough talent for the experience to be a really high quality one to both sides of the market. 

“So firstly, [we’re] focusing on growth in Australia in the next couple of years. That’s our immediate goal and then after that, we’ll be thinking about global expansion.”

In a statement, Domain’s head of talent and organisational development Nic Barry said Hatch has become the employer’s go-to channel for gen Z hiring.

“The biggest drivers in a successful hire aren’t in a CV, which is all you have access to in traditional job boards,” he said. 

“Using Hatch enables us to get a holistic view of how people approach work and their skills upfront, saving us time throughout the hiring process.”