Berlin’s HeyJobs raises €42.8M to prevent the impending labour shortage crisis in Europe; here’s how

Berlin-based HeyJobs, a startup building a career platform for essential talent in Europe, announced on Thursday that it has raised $47M (nearly €42.8M) in its Series B round of funding. The company reports that this is the largest financing round ever received by a career platform in Germany.

Investors in the round

The investment was led by Digital+ Partners and FMZ ventures, with participation from existing investors Notion Capital, Heartcore Capital and Creathor Ventures.

Patrick Beitel, Founding Partner at Digital+ Partners, says, “HeyJobs is very well positioned to become the international category leader for recruiting essential talent. In combining an excellent team, a mature technology-driven organisation and a product proposition that is building on two pillars, essential talent and employers, HeyJobs is ideally equipped to accelerate its growth in Germany, Europe and beyond.”

Digital+ Partners is a technology growth equity investor focused on DACH and European tech companies with over $800M AUM. It aims to support ‘ambitious’ entrepreneurs, by providing them with strategic advice and long-term financial support to help them define and execute their growth plans.

Capital utilisation

HeyJobs claims that the funds will help push the application of artificial intelligence in talent acquisition, supporting their mission of “helping everyone find the right job to live a fulfilling life.” HeyJobs is also setting ‘best’ practices as an employer of their own.

After being recognised as the best tech employer in Berlin, based on a Glassdoor rating of 4.7, the company has doubled its headcount in the past 12 months to 300 employees and is continuing to hire both new and seasoned professionals across product, data science, engineering and business roles. Check out their open positions here.

Marius Luther, founder and CEO of HeyJobs, says, “We are proud of the way we support companies to better and more cost-effectively achieve their hiring goals. But what really moves me is that we changed the lives of over 100’000 people by finding their next great opportunity. In 2021, we were responsible for around 1 per cent of all German hires. And while this is a nice proof of our relevance, it still feels like Day 1 in terms of the long term value we can create.”

Dr Katrin Suder to support HeyJobs’ mission

To support HeyJobs, Dr Katrin Suder has joined as independent chairperson of the HeyJobs Board of Directors. She has substantial experience as a board member and chair in listed and privately-owned companies such as Cloudflare. 

Suder was appointed by German chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet to chair the German Digital Council in 2018. Prior to this, she was State Secretary in the German Ministry of Defense. She started her career and became a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, where she was in charge of the German Public Sector Practice.

In 2011, Suder published “Competitive Advantage: Skilled Workers”, a widely cited white paper on strategies for German companies to win in difficult macro-demographic times. She says, “My career has been focused on data, technology, business, and policy, and HeyJobs is a company that is at the intersection of those areas. I look forward to supporting this exciting and highly needed mission.”

“Get the right job” or “find the right employees”

HeyJobs was founded by Marius Jeuck and Marius Luther in 2016 after Europe’s dramatically changing labour demographics. With the “boomer” generation nearing retirement, European employers are facing steep declines in the available workforce. For instance, Germany alone is losing 500,000 workers annually and German CEOs rank the “labour shortage” as their #1 concern for growth.

HeyJobs helps employers recruit ‘essential talent’ across 100 different professions such as lorry drivers, nurses or electricians. The company differentiates itself from its competitors through its data set and proprietary machine learning algorithms. 

Marius Luther says, “While 5 years ago, we could identify who is a nurse versus a driver, our AI has now learned to identify who is a qualified intensive care unit nurse that seeks to do 3-night shifts. It’s crazy how we as a society have neglected the largest share of the workforce – 30 million alone in Germany, over 200 million essential talent in Europe –  for decades. They deserve better.”

Currently, the company’s platform is used by thousands of job seekers as well as over 2,700 employers ranging from SMEs to the largest European employers. Their customers have made over 100,000 hires through HeyJobs totalling over €5B in annual wages. With offices in Berlin, Cologne and Vienna, HeyJobs currently employs more than 300 employees from over 30 nations.