Joonko closes $10 million Series A led by Vertex Ventures Israel

Joonko, an Israeli tech human resources startup that helps companies meet their diversity recruiting quotas, announced on Tuesday the closing of a $10 million series A round led by Vertex Ventures Israel. Its recruitment solution assists companies in achieving their diversity, equity and inclusion goals through its ecosystem that identifies and suggests pre-qualified candidates from across a range of underrepresented sectors, saving recruiters precious time on sourcing, attracting, and validating relevant candidates.

Joonko connects with the applicant tracking systems of partner companies to spot pre-qualified candidates and resurface them as recommended talent anywhere in the Joonko ecosystem, utilizing an artificial intelligence-powered algorithm to match the talent with relevant job openings.

Recently, research from the Boston Consulting Group has found that organizations that have stronger than average diversity are more innovative, yield more revenue, and are more profitable. Many companies, including major corporations like McDonald’s, have instituted incentive programs for diversity hiring, but the tech ecosystem doesn’t seem to be making much progress when it comes to inclusion. Joonko is focused on recreating talent pipelines, disrupting recruiting norms, and eliminating bias in recruitment. It has an impressive list of clients such as Adidas, PayPal, American Express, Regions Bank, Atlassian, and Intuit.

The company’s recent growth, some 40% quarter-on-quarter throughout 2020, has been fueled in part by increased awareness around social justice issues. As public opinion drives companies to focus more on their commitments to diversity, both consumers and executives are putting pressure on HR leaders to increase representation of minorities in the workforce, with companies introducing incentives for recruitment managers who hit diversity quotas.

“Our mission is to enable companies to make their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals a reality by delivering better representation of diverse talent. Our automated solution helps companies attract, source, and gain access to qualified, underrepresented talent. The long-term goal here is to become a go-to solution for HR departments to recruit top diverse talent,” said Ilit Raz, Joonko’s CEO and co-founder.

Vertex Ventures led the series A round, and has an extensive track record of investing in successful startups such as CyberArk, Solaredge, Waze, Ownbackup, Verbit, and Yotpo.

“We are seeing more and more forward-thinking corporations recognize workforce diversity as a critical mission and a powerful business requirement. We’re excited to see Joonko disrupting the world of workforce culture,” said Yanai Oron, General Partner at Vertex Ventures.