Japanese recruitment firm Recruit Holdings (6098: JP) announced today that it has invested in US-based HackerRank, the technical recruitment platform and code challenge community.

The investment is the second in the US for the HR Technology Fund, which was launched in January, and made its first US investment in All4Staff in March. The HR Technology Fund has an initial capitalisation of approximately USD 20 million and invests in companies from seed rounds to pre-IPO.

Recruit HR Technology Fund president Chihiro Ueda, commented: "HackerRank is a great resource for HR managers. As the demand for technology talent continues to outstrip supply, HackerRank offers an efficient way for HR professionals to evaluate talent beyond traditional means. They have built their reputation on being the go-to community for tech talent assessment."

Vivak Ravisankar, CEO of HackerRank, added: "We are excited about our partnership with Recruit. As the parent company of Indeed, they have a keen understanding of our business. Indeed has been a long-time HackerRank client, and their feedback has helped us improve our product."

Located in Mountain View, California, HackerRank has two primary businesses. It operates an online engineering community. Coders come to the site, test their skills, and are ranked among peers. Secondly, HackerRank offers a number of services for HR professionals looking to locate technology talent. They currently have more than 1,000 technology clients.

Recruit has a long-standing relationship with HackerRank through its autonomous subsidiary Indeed, one of the largest job boards in the world. Indeed has used the service to evaluate its own engineering hires, and utilises it for its new Prime service focused on targeting and assessing technology talent and providing employers with a pre-qualified shortlist of the top 5% of jobseekers.

The value of the investment was not disclosed.