TheSkillsMarket (United Kingdom) - Oct 2007

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01 October 2007

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Foresight Venture Partners and Octopus Ventures have invested £500,000 and £700,000 respectively as part of a £3m round of funding in SkillsMarket, a recruitment software solutions provider. Both firms were previously involved in a £2m funding round in June 2005, with Octopus investing £450,000 for a 25% stake and Foresight investing £1.5m to take a 40% holding in the business (1 August 2005, page 17). Following this latest financing, which was also supported by several private investors such as LEK co-founder Richard Koch, both firms have reduced their interest in the business. The new capital will be used to grow the company organically, particularly through driving the uptake of its online CV service iProfile, the launch of a new online portal and geographical expansion. Octopus (formerly Katalyst Ventures) has been an investor in SkillsMarket since December 2001, when it contributed £210,000 to the start-up business. This was followed in December 2002 by a further investment of £163,625.

Company

London-based SkillsMarket, established in 2001, launched the iProfile in January 2002. The service allows users to create detailed and structured profiles, which recruiters can use to quickly and easily create precise candidate shortlists, reducing the financial and labour costs of processing CVs. The system also automatically transmits any changes users make to all companies with which they are registered. Currently information on iProfiles is around 50% up to date, compared with just 7-10% in the average recruiter database. More than two million people now own and use an iProfile – 15% of all UK professionals.

People

Matt Taylor and Alan Wallace handled the transaction for Foresight and Octopus respectively, with Rick Bacon representing the company. Richard Koch will join the SkillsMarket Board.

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