People raise $25M to make AI work for job seekers, not just companies that hire them
The market for recruiting software — tools that help companies find and screen candidates — is worth $14 billion. The employment market is worth $500 billion.
According to people they just raised $25 million to chase the big number.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based company, which makes AI-powered interviewing tools for recruiters, is using its new Series B funding to position itself as what CEO Prem Kumar calls a “software-as-a-service” company — one that not only provides recruiters with tools to find candidates, but delivers pre-screened, hire-ready job seekers. Small recruitment software, replacement for many staffing agencies.
The round included participation from SEEK Investments, Drive Capital, Zeal Capital Partners, Converge and others. We have traditionally raised $52 million to date.
“I wouldn’t call it pivoting, but we’re reinventing ourselves,” Kumar said. “Instead of a tool to go out and find profiles of job seekers, we’re giving you the candidate itself.”
The goal is to create a continuously updated database of job seekers discussed earlier, basically like the LinkedIn profile network, but everyone in it is already vetted and ready to post.
Founded in 2018, Humanity uses automated software to help companies screen job seekers, schedule interviews, automate initial communications, conduct reference checks, and more. Target customers with high rental needs.
In person and introduces a product aimed at job seekers, it offers AI-powered training in interview preparation, resume writing, and salary negotiations – giving the company a direct relationship with candidates instead of relying only on employer clients to enter people into its system.
Time may work in one’s favor. A tight job market means many applicants are chasing fewer vacancies, which Kumar says only exacerbates the problem his company is trying to solve. AI-powered application tools have made it easier than ever for candidates to blast out applications in droves, turning nearly every open role into a high-volume hiring event. That puts more pressure on employers to filter smart — and fast.
To build a candidate database at scale, Humanly partnered with CareerBuilder, taking what the careers giant calls a “talent marketplace” — a place where job seekers go to find jobs and get training. The deal gives Humanly, which currently conducts around 9,000 interviews a day, direct access to an estimated 20 million job seekers over the next 12 months.
In person and working with Microsoft on its neurodiversity hiring program, it uses AI to help neurodiverse candidates practice negotiating skills and behaviors in a structured, low-stress environment. Partnerships address a gap Kumar says traditional recruitment processes often miss – that interview performance tends to measure communication under pressure rather than real strength.
Through this program, candidates use Humanly’s AI avatar trainer to practice explaining their thinking, navigating through trades, and building confidence before facing a real interviewer. Kumar has ADHD and his son was recently diagnosed, and he said the tool could help alleviate the underlying problem.
“We have a lot of information about other biases in people’s conversations,” Kumar said. “We feel that an AI interviewer, interviewing a neurodiverse person, may be less discriminating than humans in some situations.”
Personality, which is number 152 in the GeekWire 200 ranking of the top Pacific Northwest startups, counts Microsoft, Domino’s, Massage Envy, Worldwide Flight Services, and MGM Resorts and Casinos among its more than 120 clients. Kumar said that the company’s income has increased 3.9 times in the last seven months and that it now employs about 50 people.
Overall, Kumar sees Humanly’s flexibility as more than innovation – it’s a fundamental shift in what enterprise software can deliver.
“You no longer need to hire a large team to run a bunch of tools to get results,” he said. “Tools can start to do that themselves.”
