New York-based WayUp recently raised $18.5 million in Series B funding to execute their vision of providing recent college grads a better way to search for jobs. WayUp was originally an internship and job board for college students. Now, the woman-led company plan to target the entry level workforce market.
They believe that this market is underrepresented. LinkedIn's job search platform is built for much older generation said Liz Wessel, WayUp co-founder and CEO.
She added that WayUp will make it easier for students to search and apply for jobs via their smartphones and the site has extended efforts to reach job seekers via text message. Wessel said that they looked into the activity of 15 percent of their users and found that they were still pursuing jobs on the platform.
According to Forbes, there are 300,000 firms paying WayUp for access to their database that consist of 3.5 million jobseekers. Tech giants Adobe, Facebook and Starbucks are a few of its biggest clients.
Trinity Ventures led the investement with board partner Karan Mehandru. Mehandru said Trinity invested because they believe that employers and candidates deserve a modern and mobile first platform. WayUp's next generation platform has become the online resume that connects employers with candidates to get them hired.
Wessel said that their platform is personalized with its custom user profiles and its tailored search preferences will make it easier for companies to find the candidates they are looking for. Similar to other startups, they are investing in machine learning in order to build better algorithms.
Employers showed willingness to pay for WayUp, they spend as little as $75 for a basic plan and others spend over %500,000 to utilize all the potential features of the platform. The site targets recent graduates and companies would be able to isolate criteria like major and G.P.A.
WayUp currently has a team of over 50 employees and plan to use the funding for engineering and product teams. They have raised a total of $27.5 million in capital since it was founded in July 2014 according to Tech Crunch.
