Fika Jobs raises $4M to construct a video-first hiring platform the place AI brokers interview candidates

The hiring course of has lengthy been criticized for its inefficiency and opacity. Candidates spend hours writing functions and submitting cowl letters, solely to vanish into what typically appears like a black field. Generative AI has solely made issues messier, with employers more and more counting on AI-powered screening programs to sift by an awesome variety of submissions.

Stockholm-based startup Fika Jobs thinks there’s a greater approach. The corporate is constructing a video-first hiring platform that mixes AI interview brokers with short-form video profiles, creating one thing that appears like a cross between LinkedIn and TikTok. As a substitute of relying solely on resumes, candidates full AI-powered interviews designed to showcase their persona and communication abilities.

Fika Jobs introduced on Tuesday a $4 million pre-seed spherical, which will probably be used to proceed growing the platform, develop the staff, and put together for a wider launch later this 12 months.

For job seekers, the method begins by connecting a LinkedIn profile. Fika’s AI evaluations the candidate’s background and generates personalised interview questions. Candidates then full a roughly 10-minute video interview with the AI agent, presently powered by Google’s Gemini fashions.

After the interview, Fika mechanically turns responses into brief video clips and organizes them right into a profile. As a substitute of making use of to each new function, candidates keep a reside profile that employers can uncover and revisit as new alternatives come up.

The thought got here from co-founders and brothers Jakob Dubois (CEO) and Alexander Dubois (CTO) whereas they had been constructing their earlier startup.

“After we had been constructing [social app] Gaff, we spent a whole lot of time recruiting and nearly handed on a candidate as a result of his resume didn’t actually stand out,” Jakob Dubois advised TechCrunch. “We ended up talking with him anyway, and inside minutes, his grit, drive, and ambition turned apparent. Precisely the form of particular person we wished to rent.”

That have satisfied the founders that some traits that employers care about most are tough to seize on paper.

In contrast to most rivals (Alex, Maki, and Mercor, amongst others) that target serving to employers supply, display, and match candidates extra effectively with AI, Fika is constructing a platform the place candidates keep video-first profiles and employers browse a pool of people that have already been interviewed and evaluated by AI.

If profitable, Fika Jobs might assist employers assess communication abilities and cultural match early within the hiring course of, complementing conventional resume and software evaluations. This method could also be particularly priceless for early-career professionals and candidates from non-traditional backgrounds, whose potential just isn’t at all times obvious from a resume alone.

In fact, video profiles introduce actual bias dangers which are additionally value acknowledging. When employers can see a candidate’s race, age, gender, bodily look, and accent earlier than evaluating their {qualifications}, it opens the door to discrimination {that a} resume, for all its flaws, at the very least partially obscures. There’s a purpose some firms have moved towards blind resume screening.

The platform plans to open early entry to candidates this week, with a broader public launch anticipated this fall. The corporate will initially give attention to Sweden earlier than increasing internationally. Fika presently has a small staff however expects to achieve round 10 staff by the top of the 12 months.

Greater than 100 firms are on the waitlist, say the founders, although they declined to reveal which of them. Individually, they stated greater than 50 firms have examined the platform, together with Loads Labs, SICS.ai, Kognity, and Rebtel.

The platform is free for job seekers. Employers pay nothing up entrance, however Fika takes 10% of a candidate’s first-year wage upon a profitable rent. (The corporate notes that that is decrease than the 20% to 30% placement charges typically charged by conventional recruiters and headhunters.)

The spherical was led by Luminar Ventures, with participation from Alliance VC and King co-founders Sebastian Knutsson and Riccardo Zacconi, the duo finest identified for creating the hit cell recreation Sweet Crush.