The hiring course of has lengthy been criticized for its inefficiency and opacity. Candidates spend hours writing purposes and submitting cowl letters, solely to vanish into what usually seems like a black field. Generative AI has solely made issues messier, with employers more and more counting on AI-powered screening programs to sift by way of an awesome variety of submissions.
Stockholm-based startup Fika Jobs thinks there’s a greater method. The corporate is constructing a video-first hiring platform that mixes AI interview brokers with short-form video profiles, creating one thing that seems like a cross between LinkedIn and TikTok. As an alternative of relying solely on resumes, candidates full AI-powered interviews designed to showcase their persona and communication expertise.
Fika Jobs introduced on Tuesday a $4 million pre-seed spherical, which will likely be used to proceed growing the platform, develop the staff, and put together for a wider launch later this yr.
For job seekers, the method begins by connecting a LinkedIn profile. Fika’s AI opinions the candidate’s background and generates customized interview questions. Candidates then full a roughly 10-minute video interview with the AI agent, presently powered by Google’s Gemini fashions.
After the interview, Fika routinely turns responses into brief video clips and organizes them right into a profile. As an alternative of making use of to each new function, candidates keep a stay profile that employers can uncover and revisit as new alternatives come up.
The concept got here from co-founders and brothers Jakob Dubois (CEO) and Alexander Dubois (CTO) whereas they have been constructing their earlier startup.
“Once we have been constructing [social app] Gaff, we spent loads of time recruiting and virtually handed on a candidate as a result of his resume didn’t actually stand out,” Jakob Dubois informed Trendster. “We ended up talking with him anyway, and inside minutes, his grit, drive, and ambition grew to become apparent. Precisely the type of individual we wished to rent.”
That have satisfied the founders that some traits that employers care about most are tough to seize on paper.
In contrast to most rivals (Alex, Maki, and Mercor, amongst others) that concentrate on serving to employers supply, display screen, and match candidates extra effectively with AI, Fika is constructing a platform the place candidates keep video-first profiles and employers browse a pool of people that have already been interviewed and evaluated by AI.
If profitable, Fika Jobs may assist employers assess communication expertise and cultural match early within the hiring course of, complementing conventional resume and utility opinions. This strategy could also be particularly useful for early-career professionals and candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, whose potential is just not at all times obvious from a resume alone.
In fact, video profiles introduce actual bias dangers which can be additionally value acknowledging. When employers can see a candidate’s race, age, gender, bodily look, and accent earlier than evaluating their {qualifications}, it opens the door to discrimination {that a} resume, for all its flaws, not less than partially obscures. There’s a cause some corporations have moved towards blind resume screening.
The platform plans to open early entry to candidates this week, with a broader public launch anticipated this fall. The corporate will initially deal with Sweden earlier than increasing internationally. Fika presently has a small staff however expects to achieve round 10 workers by the top of the yr.
Greater than 100 corporations are on the waitlist, say the founders, although they declined to reveal which of them. Individually, they stated greater than 50 corporations have examined the platform, together with Loads Labs, SICS.ai, Kognity, and Rebtel.
The platform is free for job seekers. Employers pay nothing up entrance, however Fika takes 10% of a candidate’s first-year wage upon a profitable rent. (The corporate notes that that is decrease than the 20% to 30% placement charges usually charged by conventional recruiters and headhunters.)
The spherical was led by Luminar Ventures, with participation from Alliance VC and King co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, the duo greatest recognized for creating the hit cellular recreation Sweet Crush.
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