Riverview, N.B. recruitment automation startup CandidateHub.io is expanding into the British market and hopes to close a $500,000 capital raise within the next three to six months.

CEO Brad DiPaolo said in an interview that he and co-founder Sebastien Aube have been eyeing a U.K. expansion since they started the company in 2020, but began seriously exploring the possibility just a couple months ago.

The move comes in response to the March sale of British competitor Candidate.ID to New Jersey human resources software giant iCIMS. DiPaolo said the sale means CandidateHub is the main independently owned recruitment software player in England.

“With (Candidate.ID) now being a large enterprise-focused product, that has left a gap in the U.K. market for smaller companies and niche staffing agencies,” said Dipaolo. “So the timing just felt right, with that acquisition, for us to commit 100 percent to going into that market.”

CandidateHub lets employers peer into the “hidden talent market” -- job-seekers who are eyeing a potential employer, but haven’t formally reached out. The software is being developed with the help of the Université de Moncton.

DiPaolo said standard practices around recruit differ in England compared to North America. Recruitment agencies tend to be highly specialized — headhunting online within a single, narrow domain of expertise, instead of for a wide range of skillsets — and rely on automation and artificial intelligence software to a greater extent than their Canadian and U.S. counterparts.

“They have a different relationship with staffing agencies than we do in North America and a wider adoption of recruitment technology, which allows them to be much more targeted in their approach … and has been fairly successful for them,” DiPaolo said.

The result, he added, is that the U.K. is one of the world’s largest markets for recruiting software. For example, British companies rely heavily on programmatic advertising, which is the use of software to automate online ad purchases, in their recruitment drives. Demand for hiring assistance is also particularly acute right now because Britain is facing a labour crunch similar to that wracking Canadian tech companies.

He said Britain could also function as an entry point to the European market, if CandidateHub can establish a foothold in the country and build a track record with customers.

So far, the company has only two employees, but DiPaolo hopes to hire both technical staff and salespeople to help with the U.K. expansion after the funding round closes.