Founders: Dr. Shay David, Avi Simon and Isabelle Bichler-Eliasaf Investors: Square Peg, Hetz Ventures, Radical Ventures
Year founded: 2020
Employees: 75
Capital raised: $34 million
A candidate submits a resume for a job as an engineer in a huge corporation. The resume does not meet the threshold requirements and the candidate is rejected automatically, even though their experience is an exact fit for a technician position open in a different division at the same organization. At the same time, the company’s finance department decides to post an ad for an analyst, unaware that there is someone suitable in the marketing department who is looking to be promoted, and who could fill the position after a short training period.
Startup Retrain.ai’s software deals with inefficiencies in the recruitment process, making the hiring of suitable candidates faster, whether from the outside or internally. Where today’s employee recruiting and screening continues to be hands-on and intuition-based - with its many flaws - Retrain.ai introduces big data and artificial intelligence into the process.
Retrain.ai’s software first breaks down positions that the organization seeks to fill into a list of the tasks that they involve, and then into the skills required to perform those tasks. Retrain.ai’s database includes no less than 50,000 skills, ranging from strict technical requirements (such as a high level of Excel proficiency or an economics degree) to soft ones (being a team player). "A position such as project manager can have different definitions even in different departments of the same organization," explains Dr. Shay David, CEO and co-founder of Retrain.ai. "That's why the software reviews the list of tasks attached to the various project manager positions and extracts from each of them the skills required for the particular job."
After the software has extracted the necessary skills, Retrain.ai’s solution can then analyze the resumes sent by external candidates, break them down into skills, and work out which match the open positions. At the same time, Retrain.ai can scan the information available on existing employees in the organization, and analyze their skills and determine which positions they might be able to advance to now, or in the future.
At the end of the process, Retrain.ai's software outputs a list of the most suitable candidates. The software will even identify the places where a candidate's skills and the job requirements are not perfectly aligned, and will either issue a computerized questionnaire or instruct the (human) recruiter to check the matter with the candidate concerned. "40% of a recruiter's time is wasted sifting through resumes," explains Isabelle Bichler-Eliasaf, co-founder and COO at Retrain.ai. "We save the recruiter’s time by generating a list for them of the ten best candidates who are worth bringing in for screening."
Retrain.ai was founded in September 2020 by three people: Dr. Shay David, among the founders of video solutions company Kaltura, which he left to found Retrain.ai; Col. (res.) Avi Simon, previously Chief Data Officer of the Israel Defense Forces and Directorate CIO and CTO of Israeli Military Intelligence; and Isabelle Bichler-Eliasaf, an experienced entrepreneur who in recent years has been involved in investment management for high-net-worth individuals.
Retrain.ai currently employs about 75 people and it has raised about $34 million so far. According to its founders, the company already has dozens of customers, but they decline to name them. One client that has already been revealed is Israeli health fund Maccabi Healthcare Services.
Retrain.ai competes in the Talent Intelligence Platforms sector, which flourished during the days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when many companies suffered from accelerated rates of resignations and from understaffing.
The biggest player in the field is Eightfold.ai, which has raised $400 million since it was founded in 2016. Another player is Canada’s SkyHive, which has raised $48 million. Additional competition comes from giant corporations like Oracle and SAP SuccessFactors, that also provide employee management systems to enterprises. These companies are trying to add artificial intelligence and analytical capabilities to their products.
The Most Promising Startups rankings are part of the annual Enterprise Technology Summit held by "Globes" and JP Morgan.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 14, 2022.
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