{"id":24349,"date":"2021-05-16T05:41:42","date_gmt":"2021-05-16T05:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rbsitsoftwaresolution.com\/blog\/worksome-pulls-13m-into-its-high-skill-freelancer-talent-platform.html"},"modified":"2021-05-16T05:41:42","modified_gmt":"2021-05-16T05:41:42","slug":"worksome-pulls-13m-into-its-high-skill-freelancer-talent-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/worksome-pulls-13m-into-its-high-skill-freelancer-talent-platform.html","title":{"rendered":"Worksome pulls $13M into its high skill freelancer talent platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

More money for the now very buzzy business of reshaping how people work: Worksome<\/a> is announcing it recently closed a $13 million Series A funding round for its \u201cfreelance talent platform\u201d \u2014 after racking up 10x growth in revenue since January 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a remote working boom.<\/p>\n

The 2017 founded startup, which has a couple of ex-Googlers in its leadership team, has built a platform to connect freelancers looking for professional roles with employers needing tools to find and manage freelancer talent.<\/p>\n

It says it\u2019s seeing traction with large enterprise customers that have traditionally used Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to manage and pay external workforces \u2014 and views employment agency giants like Randstad, Adecco and Manpower as ripe targets for disruption.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost multinational enterprises manage flexible workers using legacy MSPs,\u201d says CEO and co-founder Morten Petersen (one of the Xooglers). \u201cThese largely analogue businesses manage complex compliance and processes around hiring and managing freelance workforces with handheld processes and outdated technology that is not built for managing fluid workforces. Worksome tackles this industry head on with a better, faster and simpler solution to manage large freelancer and contractor workforces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worksome focuses on helping medium\/large companies \u2014 who are working with at least 20+ freelancers at a time \u2014 fill vacancies within teams rather than helping companies outsource projects, per Petersen, who suggests the latter is the focus for the majority of freelancer platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWorksome helps [companies] onboard people who will provide necessary skills and will be integral to longer-term business operations. It makes matches between companies and skilled freelancers, which the businesses go on to trust, form relationships with and come back to time and time again,\u201d he goes on.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen companies hire dozens or hundreds of freelancers at one time, processes can get very complicated,\u201d he adds, arguing that on compliance and payments Worksome \u201ctakes on a much greater responsibility than other freelancing platforms to make big hires easier\u201d.<\/p>\n

The startup also says it\u2019s concerned with looking out for (and looking after) its freelancer talent pool \u2014 saying it wants to create \u201ca world of meaningful work\u201d on its platform, and ensure freelancers are paid fairly and competitively. (And also that they are paid faster than they otherwise might be, given it takes care of their payroll so they don\u2019t have to chase payments from employers.)<\/p>\n

The business started life in Copenhagen \u2014 and its Series A has a distinctly Nordic flavor, with investment coming from the Danish business angel and investor on the local version of the Dragons\u2019 Den<\/em> TV program L\u00f8vens Hule; the former Minister for Higher Education and Science, Tommy Ahlers; and family home manufacturer Lind Ris\u00f8r.<\/p>\n

It had raised just under $6M prior to thus round, per Crunchbase<\/a>, and also counts some (unnamed) Google executives among its earlier investors.<\/p>\n

Freelancer platforms (and marketplaces<\/a>) aren\u2019t new, of course. There are also an increasing number of players in this space \u2014 buoyed by a new flush of VC dollars chasing the \u2018future of work\u2019, whatever hybrid home-office flexible shape that might take. <\/span>So Worksome is by no means alone in offering tech tools to streamline the interface between freelancers and businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few others that spring to mind include Lystable<\/a> (now Kalo), Malt<\/a>, Fiverr<\/a> \u2014 or, for techie job matching specifically, the likes of HackerRank<\/a> \u2014 plus, on the blue collar work side, Jobandtalent<\/a>. There\u2019s also a growing number of startups focusing on helping freelancer teams specifically (e.g. Collective<\/a>), so there\u2019s a trend towards increasing specialism.<\/p>\n

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Collective launches a SaaS marketplace for freelancer teams<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Worksome says it differentiates vs other players (legacy and startups) by combining services like tax compliance, background and ID checks and handling payroll and other admin with an AI powered platform that matches talent to projects.<\/p>\n

Although it\u2019s not the only startup offering to do the back-office admin\/payroll piece, either, nor the only one using AI to match skilled professionals to projects. But it claims it\u2019s going further than rival \u2018freelancer-as-a-service\u2019 platforms \u2014 saying it wants to \u201caddress the entire value chain\u201d (aka: \u201ceverything from the hiring of freelance talent to onboarding and payment\u201d).<\/p>\n

Worksome has 550 active clients (i.e. employers in the market for freelancer talent) at this stage; and has accepted 30,000 freelancers into its marketplace so far.<\/p>\n

Its current talent pool can take on work across 12 categories, and collectively offers more than 39,000 unique skills, per Petersen.<\/p>\n

The biggest categories of freelancer talent on the platform are in Software and IT; Design and Creative Work; Finance and Management Consulting; plus \u201ca long tail of niche skills\u201d within engineering and pharmaceuticals.<\/p>\n

While its largest customers are found in the creative industries, tech and IT, pharma and consumer goods. And its biggest markets are the U.K. and U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are currently trailing at +20,000 yearly placements,\u201d says Petersen, adding: \u201cThe average yearly spend per client is $300,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worksome says the Series A funding will go on stoking growth by investing in marketing. It also plans to spend on product dev and on building out its team globally (it also has offices in London and New York).<\/p>\n

Over the past 12 months the startup doubled the size of its team to 50 \u2014 and wants to do so again within 12 months so it can ramp up its enterprise client base in the U.S., U.K. and euro-zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, there are a lot of freelancer platforms out there but a lot of these don\u2019t appreciate that hiring is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reducing the friction in working with freelancers,\u201d argues Petersen. \u201cOf the time that goes into hiring, managing and paying freelancers, 75% is currently spent on admin such as timesheet approvals, invoicing and compliance checks, leaving only a tiny fraction of time to actually finding talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Worksome woos employers with a \u201cone-click-hire\u201d offer \u2014 touting its ability to find and hire freelancers \u201cwithin seconds\u201d.<\/p>\n

If hiring a stranger in seconds sounds ill-advised, Worksome greases this external employment transaction by taking care of vetting the freelancers itself (including carrying out background checks; and using proprietary technology to asses freelancers\u2019 skills and suitability for its marketplace).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a two-step vetting process to ensure that we only allow the best freelance talent onto the Worksome platform,\u201d Petersen tells TechCrunch. \u201cFor step one, an inhouse-built robot assesses our freelancer applicants. It analyses their skillset, social media profiles, profile completeness and hourly or daily rate, as well as their CV and work history, to decide whether each person is a good fit for Worksome.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor step two, our team of talent specialists manually review and decline or approve the freelancers that pass through step one with a score of 85% or more. We have just approved our 30,000th freelancer and will be able to both scale and improve our vetting procedure as we grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

A majority of freelancer applicants fail Worksome\u2019s proprietary vetting processes. This is clear because it says it has received 80,000 applicants so far \u2014 but only approved 30,000.<\/p>\n

That raises interesting questions about how it\u2019s making decisions on who is (and isn\u2019t) an \u2018appropriate fit\u2019 for its talent marketplace.<\/p>\n

It says its candidate assessing \u201crobot\u201d looks at \u201cwhether freelancers can demonstrate the skillset, matching work history, industry experience and profile depth\u201d deemed necessary to meet its quality criteria \u2014 giving the example that it would not accept a freelancer who says they can lead complex IT infrastructure projects if they do not have evidence of relevant work, education and skills.<\/p>\n

On the AI freelancer-to-project matching side, Worksome says its technology aims to match freelancers \u201cwho have the highest likelihood of completing a job with high satisfaction, based on their work-history, and performance and skills used on previous jobs\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis creates a feedback loop that\u2026 ensure that both clients and freelancers are matched with great people and great work,\u201d is its circular suggestion when we ask about this. <\/span><\/p>\n

But it also emphasizes that its AI is not making hiring decisions on its own \u2014 and is only ever supporting humans in making a choice. (An interesting caveat since existing EU data protection rules, under Article 22 of the GDPR, provide for a right for individuals to object to automated decision making if significant decisions are being taken without meaningful human interaction.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Using automation technologies (like AI) to make assessments that determine whether a person gains access to employment opportunities or doesn\u2019t can certainly risk scaled discrimination. So the devil really is in the detail of how these algorithmic assessments are done.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why such uses of technology are set to face close regulatory scrutiny in the European Union \u2014 under incoming rules on \u2018high risk\u2019 users of artificial intelligence \u2014 including the use of AI to match candidates to jobs.<\/p>\n

The EU\u2019s current legislative proposals<\/a> in this area specifically categorize \u201cemployment, workers management and access to self-employment\u201d as a high risk use of AI, meaning applications like Worksome are likely to face some of the highest levels of regulatory supervision in the future.<\/p>\n

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Europe lays out plan for risk-based AI rules to boost trust and uptake<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Nonetheless, Worksome is bullish when we ask about the risks associated with using AI as an intermediary for employment opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe utilise fairly advanced matching algorithms to very effectively shortlist candidates for a role based solely on objective criteria, rinsed from human bias,\u201d claims Petersen. \u201cOur algorithms don\u2019t take into account gender, ethnicity, name of educational institutions or other aspects that are usually connected to human bias.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAI has immense potential in solving major industry challenges such as recruitment bias, low worker mobility and low access to digital skills among small to medium sized businesses. We are firm believers that technology should be utilized to remove human bias\u2019 from any hiring process,\u201d he goes on, adding: \u201cOur tech was built to this very purpose from the beginning, and the new proposed legislation has the potential to serve as a validator for the hard work we\u2019ve put into this.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe obvious potential downside would be if new legislation would limit innovation by making it harder for startups to experiment with new technologies. As always, legislation like this will impact the Davids more than the Goliaths, even though the intentions may have been the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zooming back out to consider the pandemic-fuelled remote working boom, Worksome confirms that most of the projects for which it supplied freelancers last year were conducted remotely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are currently seeing a slow shift back towards a combination of remote and onsite work and expect this combination to stick amongst most of our clients,\u201d Petersen goes on. <\/span>\u201cWhenever we are in uncertain economic times, we see a rise in the number of freelancers that companies are using. However, this trend is dwarfed by a much larger overall trend towards flexible work, which drives the real shift in the market. This shift has been accelerated by COVID-19 but has been underway for many years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile remote work has unlocked an enormous potential for accessing talent everywhere, 70% of the executives expect to use more temporary workers and contractors onsite than they did before COVID-19, according to a recent McKinsey study. This shows that businesses really value the flexibility in using an on-demand workforce of highly skilled specialists that can interact directly with their own teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked whether it\u2019s expecting growth in freelancing to sustain even after we (hopefully) move beyond the pandemic \u2014 including if there\u2019s a return to physical offices \u2014 Petersen<\/span> suggests the underlying trend is for businesses to need increased flexibility, regardless of the exact blend of full-time and freelancer staff. So platforms like Worksome are confidently poised to keep growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you ask business leaders, 90% believe that shifting their talent model to a blend of full-time and freelancers can give a future competitive advantage (Source: BCG),\u201d he says. \u201cWe see two major trends driving this sentiment; access to talent, and building an agile and flexible organization. This has become all the more true during the pandemic \u2014 a high degree of flexibility is allowing organisations to better navigate both the initial phase of the pandemic as well the current pick up of business activity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the amount of change that we\u2019re currently seeing in the world, and with businesses are constantly re-inventing themselves, the access to highly skilled and flexible talent is absolutely essential \u2014 now, in the next 5 years, and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n

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6 VCs share their bets on the future of work<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Malt raises $28.6 million for its freelancer platform<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Fiverr Business helps teams manage freelance projects<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/qag_UgNpoCo\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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