Loophire secures $300,000 funding in seed round

In its first open round of seed funding, Omaha startup Loophire recently secured an investment of $300,000 from Nebraska Angels to support the disruptive recruitment model that Loophire CEO and founder Chris Jones believes will shake up the recruitment industry. The idea for Loophire first arrived as a sudden idea in the middle of the…

In its first open round of seed funding, Omaha startup Loophire recently secured an investment of $300,000 from Nebraska Angels to support the disruptive recruitment model that Loophire CEO and founder Chris Jones believes will shake up the recruitment industry.

The idea for Loophire first arrived as a sudden idea in the middle of the night. A few years ago, Jones was working in training and development at an Omaha staffing agency while researching how automation technology could be applied to the recruitment industry.

From Jones’s perspective, his employer’s CRM was five years out of date, so he was building demos to see how to update and better streamline this software and other processes. Trying to solve these recruitment industry problems compelled him to create a new hiring and staffing strategy for job seekers and employers.

“It came to me in the middle of the night,” he said. “I went and wrote on my white board in my office, ‘If you can build consistency, checks and balances, and traditional best practices for recruitment enhanced with technology, you can create a utopia of hiring.’”

Eventually, those sleepy thoughts crystallized and became the launching point for Loophire, and since 2019, the startup has focused on eliminating the “firehose” of resumes from job boards.

Under the Loophire model, employers only pay for the applicants they want to contact, and jobseekers can better discover what they’re looking for in a position and company, as Loophire provides applicants with an analysis of their job qualifications and the results of a personality test. At this point, Loophire introduces each job seeker to the companies that best match their skills, experiences and goals.

Since forming, Loophire has worked with over 3,000 employers and job seekers, Jones said.

How will the seed funding affect Loophire’s future?

“(This funding will allow us) to create the foundation to scale our technology, reach a wider audience through marketing efforts, and also increase our labor force internally,” Jones said.

As his company grows, Jones sees other ways beyond automation for Loophire to disrupt the recruitment industry. One important goal, which SPN covered in an in-depth series last summer (check out “Side-eyeing bias in the hiring process”) is to eliminate bias in the hiring process, something that companies like Brazillian startup Jobecam are also working to bring to the U.S.

“I want to anonymize candidates,” Jones said. “Where somebody’s name, race, or their gender will never come into play when that person comes up for the job.”

Jones said he plans for Loophire to be an always-evolving product that can meet the changing needs of jobseekers and employers. Noting that the functions or salary of a person’s job are not their only motivators, Jones said Loophire strives to optimize the pairing of ideal candidates with ideal jobs. Ultimately, Jones believes this will create happier outcomes for employers and employees—and longer, more fulfilling careers. 

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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