Clu targets enterprise growth with new investment round

Clu, a skills based inclusive hiring platform, today announces an investment round of £1.2 million to further progress its goal of becoming a major player within the Talent-Tech market, which is forecast to reach $30 billion by 2033. 

Since it began trading in last year, the London-headquartered company has disrupted the rec-tech market by securing skills aligned work for nearly 7,000 people, onboarded over 10,000 users, creates 33,000 role matches a week and has a predicted revenue of £12 million by 2026. 

In 2022, investment in HR tech increased by 44% from the previous year, with the sector now worth £25 billion globally and is growing at a CAGR of 13.6% year on year. Meanwhile, outdated hiring practices are costing companies on average £2.5million a year, demonstrating the instant need for change in the HR tech space. 

Clu has created a new category in talent-tech that streamlines candidate attraction and qualification which ultimately improves hiring experience and the time required to hire. The SaaS recruitment platform provides unparalleled access to diverse talent supported by real-time data to optimise accuracy, engagement, and experience in the hiring process, generating hundreds of skills-aligned job applications per week for employers with an average application to interview conversion rate of 60%, compared to the industry standard of 5-8%. 

The product’s design principles are neuro-inclusive and accessible with a core focus on upskilling and confidence building for hiring teams and job seekers. Workforce management company CXC Global is the most recent major company to use the system and to secure the official Clu’d Up verification, showing its commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. 

With over 50 job centres across London and Essex using Clu, and expansion plans in Northwest England underway, the company is already building a strong case for adoption in the government sector, which they aim to launch across Europe in 2025. They plan to become the Human Resources Information System (HRIS) bolt-on of choice for inclusive talent lifecycle management, underpinning its key differentiator. 

Clu was founded by tech entrepreneurs Joseph Williams and Cayelan Mendoza and its impressive team of advisers include tech industry heavyweights Maggie Lower, NED of Grindr, Kia Christian, VP of People Ops at Google and Lalitha Stables, SVP Public Sector Sales for EMEA at Salesforce. 

Emily Foges, Chair at Clu, said: “After years of mounting social pressures around diversity, companies are now being held publicly accountable for their engagement and treatment of diverse talent. However, most leaders still aren’t clear on what it takes to build a high-performing, diverse workforce. 

“Job boards and filtering software are exacerbating the problem. This one-to-many advertising model floods the talent market with poorly articulated jobs, presenting hiring managers with insurmountable volumes of unsuitable applications, severely increasing time to hire and resulting in over 70% of employees not having the right skills for their jobs.  

Joseph Williams, the company’s Co-Founder and CEO said: “It is not enough for HR teams to focus on automation to solve the biased recruitment problem. Without improved experience, accuracy and inclusiveness at the core of new hiring processes, employers will continue to struggle to maintain a diverse workforce. Clu’s market leading and unique hiring methodology is the solution to this burning societal issue as we are transforming the talent lifecycle and ultimately driving positive socio-economic mobility for marginalised groups.” 

He concludes: “Clu’s process redesign has the potential to solve the retention crisis, upskill the workforce and reduce HR-related revenue waste, whilst aiming to add one million socially mobile people to the workforce over the next ten years.”