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Recruit fund invests in tech recruitment platform and code challenge community

July 14, 2015

Recruit Holdings Co., the world’s fifth-largest staffing firm and the largest staffing firm in Japan, invested in HackerRank, a technical recruitment platform and code challenge community owned by Interviewstreet Inc.

The investment is the second in the US for the Recruit’s HR Technology Fund, which launched in January. The fund in March invested in All4Staff Inc., a technology company with an automated onboarding solution for the human resources industry.

The strategic corporate venture fund invests in human resource companies and has an initial capitalization of approximately $20 million. It will invest in companies ranging from seed rounds to pre-IPO.

“HackerRank is a great resource for HR managers,” said Recruit HR Technology Fund President Chihiro Ueda. “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.”

Mountain View, Calif.-based HackerRank has two primary businesses. It operates an online engineering community where coders test their skills and are ranked among peers. HackerRank also offers a number of services for HR professionals looking to locate technology talent. It currently counts more than 1,000 technology clients.

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

“We are excited about our partnership with Recruit,” said HackerRank CEO Vivak Ravisankar. “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.”