Shortlist, the online platform connecting African and Indian employers to top talent, has raised $2 Mn in a round of Series A financing led by Blue Haven Ventures, with participation from Zephyr Acorn, Compass Venture Capital, Potencia Ventures, and others. 

Shortlist combines technology and human touch to understand job-seekers’ skills, attitude, and motivation, fueling better hiring outcomes for employers across East Africa and India. With this round of funding, they will work towards their vision to help companies in Africa and India build their teams, grounded in the belief that potential and motivation matter more than a CV, and that both companies and job-seekers deserve better than the status quo.

Paul Breloff, Co-Founder and CEO of Shortlist shared, “We’re focused on finding the right measure of tech-powered scale and human-driven curation to build the best teams, with a focus on quality over quantity. This round and our new partners will help us accelerate our efforts to get employers to ditch the CV in favor of more predictive measures of fit.”

Launched in 2016, Shortlist has screened over 400,000 candidates for over 300 clients ranging from startups to international corporations, including DHL, M-KOPA, Shell, Sula Vineyards, and Uber Eats. Currently operating throughout India and Kenya, the company plans to expand its footprint within and beyond East Africa in 2019.

Talent scarcity, especially in areas of tech is a global challenge and many new startups in this space of recruitment tech have emerged in recent years to help industries deal with this challenge. The entire technology in the recruitment industry is rapidly growing. Interestingly, the spend on technology around the recruitment industry in India is going to touch $5 Bn or Rs 500 crore by 2020. However, the problem still remains and companies are continuously on a lookout for robust solutions that can help them in finding the right talent. 

Lauren Cochran, Managing Director at Blue Haven Ventures reiterated the problem of lack of access to talent and said, “Across our portfolio, the biggest barrier to growth is access to talents. Hiring high-quality people in emerging markets takes too much time and slows teams down.”

Cochran believes in Shortlist’s solutions and shared how the HR tech firm delivers a best-in-class solution to the human capital challenge from entry and mid-level hires to senior level executive search. While Shortlist promises to be the go-to solution for the recruitment challenge, it stands in competition with many names in the space, from staffing firms like Naukri, Monster, Indeed and Shine to emerging brands like Belong, Aasaanjobs and QuikrJobs.