San Francisco – February 18, 2021 – 2020 was a difficult year across the board for many people. For SmartRecruiters, the pandemic and its subsequent shift to remote work doubled down the company’s efforts to support customers, employees, and businesses. In the world of remote work, more companies realize that people are their most important assets and that who they hire and retain defines their success. SmartRecruiters helped companies reinvent the way people work – driving hiring transformation projects with TA teams operating under tighter budgets and resources. As a result of focused efforts in 2020, the company experienced 50% YOY global growth, added 200 global enterprise customers to the SmartRecruiters family, and celebrated a top leader ranking in the IDC MarketScape for modern TA Suites.
At the early onset of the pandemic, companies seized the opportunity to upskill their talent. SmartRecruiters responded by sharing industry best practices and learnings on HiringSuccess.com including the Hiring Success Master Class (with 6,500 attendees and counting), and launching global customer user groups and free certification training. The company also launched two virtual conferences in Europe, bringing strategic partners and TA leaders together to share their experience and skills around specific TA & Hiring Success topics.
Companies also leveraged the lower recruiting volumes to accelerate digital transformation in recruiting. Global enterprises in a variety of industries including retail, government, health care, manufacturing and tech partnered with SmartRecruiters to elevate their hiring technology and processes. The continued focus on delivering Hiring Success for customers resulted in 91% gross retention and helping them hire more effectively during the pandemic. In fact, 9 out of 10 recruiters say SmartRecruiters has helped them accomplish more despite smaller budgets & less resources in 2020, according to annual customer survey results.
The global shift to remote work also highlighted the need for collaborative tools to hire among dispersed teams. SmartRecruiters invested R&D time to build a new platform for remote hiring. Simultaneously, the company went remote forever and served as a role model of how to hire remotely and benefit from expanding global talent pools.
The result was product releases full of collaborative tools for TA teams such as the Internal Mobility Portal to hire internal talent, Remote Jobs posting feature, Workflows and Tasks to stay on top of recruiting tasks, SmartMessage text recruiting to reach candidates on the go, SmartPal recruiting chatbot to automate repetitive work, SmartJobs advertising as a service, video interview integrations, and more. The company is proud to share that in the annual customer survey, 9 out of 10 users say SmartRecruiters improved their ability to hire remotely in 2020. With over 150 features shipped and welcoming Frances Ibe as the new VP of Product, the company is excited for the next era of product innovation and delivering Hiring Success to customers.
SmartRecruiters also committed to fighting discrimination in recruiting and celebrating all dimensions of diversity. The company welcomed Chief Diversity Officer, Rocki Howard, to lead the charge and help SmartRecruiters become a catalyst for change for customers and the recruiting industry as a whole. As a first step of the process, the company launched the Diversity Hiring toolkit to help companies achieve true diversity outcomes. The company is also working on releasing an updated Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) plan.
2020 also marked a milestone year for the company – celebrating its 10 year anniversary with over 10 million jobs created. The company helped connect 24 million candidates to 300k jobs in 2020 alone. Additionally, SmartRecruiters offered its modern talent acquisition suite to spark movements to connect people to jobs at scale. Starting with Jobs for Lebanon, now Lebanon’s largest job center with almost 10,000 candidates across 37 countries, and quickly spreading to Jobs for Australia, Jobs for Netherlands, and Recruiters Recruiting Recruiters – a consortium of 200+ companies who are helping furloughed recruiters get back to work.
SmartRecruiters’ mission to connect people to jobs is stronger than ever for 2021 and beyond. To drive even more impact, the company plans to grow the team by 30% and to continue innovating for a full end-to-end TA Suite. Exciting planned product releases include native onboarding and an even more robust internal mobility platform.
“I’m grateful and humbled by the resiliency and Smartian spirit of our team during a very challenging year for many, especially our TA community,” says Jerome Ternynck, Founder and CEO of SmartRecruiters. “It proves you are who you hire. When you have a team committed to your mission – connecting people to jobs at scale – they put the heart of the customer and candidates at the forefront. When that is your north star, we can achieve great things for the recruiting industry and continue to deliver Hiring Success around the world.”
