Emerging from the Energia Ventures accelerator, Moncton-based recruitment automation startup CandidateHub.io is working on closing a pending investment round with a target of about $500,000.

In an interview following the Energia Demo Day, CandidateHub Founder and CEO Brad DiPaolo said the company is now going through due diligence with a potential lead investor for the round, and he hopes he will be able to close the round this summer. He added he is working with the Fredericton startup Profitual to determine the final target for the round. 

The reason for the optimism in a tough financing environment is the company has recently completed a year-long pilot project with a major Canadian health authority. The campaign to hire nurses and administrative staff has been producing the sort of results that should not only impress investors but also help the company attract more health authorities across Canada as clients.

“In one case, we ran a trade fair last summer with 200 students, who were close to graduation,” said DiPaolo in the interview. “We were able to get 89 nursing students on the [hospital] floor within a few months. It’s going to have a positive impact for healthcare.”

CandidateHub has developed software that helps employers – especially in the healthcare industry – streamline the hiring process. Its goal is to help employers hire the best candidate quickly, thereby saving money, and for applicants to have a more rewarding experience, whether or not they land the job.

The company was originally launched with the aim of letting employers peer into the “hidden talent market” — job-seekers who are eyeing a potential employer, but haven’t formally reached out. But the company’s software can also be used to sift through old data from applicant-tracking systems with the hope of reviving stale applications in a process called retargeting.

DiPaolo said the company has improved the functionality lately to let the users use artificial intelligence for such tasks as writing emails.

In streamlining the client’s job fair process, CandidateHub created a QR code so candidates could quickly find an application form and apply. These sorts of improvement increased the candidate response rate from 1 percent to 5 percent. The campaign collected information on each candidate, including their education and background, and made sure the right candidate met with the right recruiter. It saved the department 13 hours a week in labour, he said.

“The biggest thing for us is that we’re creating a much more positive experience for candidates,” said DiPaolo. “They’re not going into black holes; they’re getting responses. We’re making employers more attractive because the experience is more seamless for the candidates.”

DiPaolo and strategic advisor James Whitelock are still the only two staff members with the company, and the CEO said the first priority once it closes the round is to increase staff in sales and engineering.

Candidate hub was one of five companies accepted into the most recent cohort of Energia, the accelerator offered by the J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology, Management and Entrepreneurship at the University of New Brunswick. DiPaolo said the program helped him to focus the business and prepare for investors.

“Having gone through the Energia program, we came out ready to raise,” he said. “It helped in creating a target list of investors. That program really put us where we needed to be to go out and knock on investors’ doors. We’re having much more success now.”