Anyone who’s interviewed for a job knows how much of a black box the experience can be. Being in the dark constantly about where you stand and what to expect next, if you hear back from the company at all. It can be frustrating and demoralizing.
Looking behind the curtain at the organizations that are hiring, you’ll learn that their recruiters aren’t to blame. They’re challenged with a black box of their own. Recruiting teams don’t have visibility into which candidates are most engaged and why. This makes it incredibly difficult to deliver the personalized experience that each individual deserves.
Unfortunately this problem isn’t unique to smaller or less-resourced organizations. Even today’s most modern and well-staffed recruiting teams rely on generic email templates and PDFs to make an impression and differentiate themselves from a sea of companies competing for the same hires. In a candidate’s market, this isn’t enough to win.
Guide’s mission is to bring transparency and humanity to the hiring process.
With Guide’s candidate experience platform, talent teams can invite their candidates into a single hub to access everything they need — from personalized interview details to timelines, prep materials, interviewer bios, and more. And because Guide serves as the primary home base for candidates during the interview process, Guide unlocks insights to help talent teams identify which candidates are most engaged and which are at risk of dropping off.
As candidates find themselves with more options than ever before, and as “candidate experience” becomes synonymous with a Zoom window, companies need to make an impression more than ever. Providing transparency and a personalized approach not only increases candidate engagement and trust, but is a proven way to drive up conversion rates and make more hires faster.
Announcing $8M in Seed Funding
Today, we’re thrilled to announce that Guide has raised $8M in seed funding to further our mission, led by First Round Capital and Spero Ventures, with participation from SV Angel, Operator Partners, Scribble Ventures, TnT Ventures, Correlation Ventures, Muir Capital, 75 & Sunny Ventures, MKT1 Capital, PeopleTech Angels and over 50 people-focused founders and executives from companies like Zoom, Carta, Plaid, Figma, Loom, Gem and more.
We’re also excited to have Andrew Parker from Spero Ventures join our board, along with Meka Asonye from First Round Capital as a board observer. Andrew and Meka are big believers in the power of transparency and treating people the way they deserve — as humans!
What’s Next for Guide?
We’re still in the early innings of candidate experience and we’re excited to invest in a new category of software that improves the lives of candidates and recruiters. Today with Guide, recruiters can make an amazing impression on candidates with just a few clicks, and candidates can make more informed job decisions with increased transparency and personalization. We’re thankful for early customers like Gitlab, Glossier, MongoDB and One Medical who’ve helped Guide reach and delight tens of thousands of candidates to date.
Looking forward, we're intently focused on building a world class team to accelerate our vision for a more human candidate experience (PS - we’re hiring remotely and love having fun at work). We’re making large investments in product development to further enrich the end candidate experience and deliver more insights to recruiters and hiring managers, plus deeper integrations with the tools they already use and love.
If you’re looking to make an unforgettable impression on candidates and gain a competitive edge in recruiting, request a personalized walkthrough of the Guide platform here 🚀
We couldn't be more pumped to get to work.
