Student-focused social Q&A platform Piazza launched a new recruiting tool called Piazza Careers, TechCrunch reported.
The new service, which enables firms to look for and link with a pool of potential talents, was officially rolled out after a long beta testing period. The product was launched with the support of an additional $8 million in a Series B round which was completed in 2013 but was not publicly announced. That round was led by Khosla Ventures and participated in by Piazza's existing backer Bessemer Ventures. Proceeds from that financing brought Piazza's fundraising total to $15.5 million so far, after the $1.5 million it raised in 2011 and the Series A funding it closed in 2012 which raked in $6 million, the report said.
Piazza Careers allow recruiters to search the over a million students using Piazza for possible job offers. The product's advanced filters enable recruiters to narrow down their search for potential talents on particular set of criteria. For example, they can find students who have internship experience in particular firms such as Apple or are now holding teaching assistantship positions in a university's engineering department. Recruiters can then get in touch with their prospective employees by sending them a message. All these will be available for a fee, of course. The subscription fee for recruiters to be able to use the product begins at $20K per semester, the report said.
Although the features of the new product reminds one of the recruiters' tools provided by LinkedIn, Piazza said they aim to provide startups and other smaller firms similar basic recruiting tools that used to be available only to larger firms. It aims to make the recruitment process more merit-based and allow students the chance to get a good job no matter where they graduated from. So far, Yelp, Box, SpaceX and Hearsay Social are already on board the Piazza platform, the report said.
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