Dover Raises $20M to Revolutionize Recruitment with Orchestration

The Recruitment Industry and the Rise of Orchestration Platforms

Although an early adopter of the internet for business and customer engagement, the recruitment sector surprisingly lags in embracing modern, cloud-based services for improved efficiency. A new company is aiming to rectify this, having secured funding based on promising initial results.

Dover: A Recruitment Orchestration Platform

Dover, founded by Max Kolysh and colleagues, has developed a “recruitment orchestration platform.” This platform assists recruiters in managing and consolidating candidate pools to automatically identify suitable applicants. It also streamlines outreach, including automated job description rewriting and the creation of recruitment and rejection correspondence.

Series A Funding and Key Investors

The company has successfully raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global. Additional investors include Founders Fund, Abstract Ventures, and Y Combinator. Dover initially participated in Y Combinator’s Summer 2019 program, debuting in August 2020, and received seed funding from Founders Fund.

Growing Customer Base

Since completing the Y Combinator program, Dover has acquired over 100 clients, primarily within the technology sector. These include companies like ClearCo, Lattice, and Samsara, as well as larger organizations that typically maintain their own internal automation systems.

The Parallel with Sales and Marketing

The concept of “orchestration” in business IT is well-established in sales and marketing, where platforms are used to source leads and manage initial engagement. This approach proves remarkably applicable to the recruitment industry, which also involves a form of company “sales” to attract candidates.

Recruitment as a Sales Function

“I would say recruiting is sales and marketing,” states Kolysh. “We’re comparable to sales ops, but sales is five-10 years ahead in terms of technology.”

Challenges Faced by Recruiters

Recruiters and hiring managers, particularly in competitive talent markets, face significant administrative burdens in identifying and engaging potential candidates. This includes screening applicants, managing communication, and handling rejections alongside extending job offers.

Fragmentation of the Recruitment Process

A key issue is the fragmented nature of the recruitment process. Numerous tools handle different stages, and a vast array of platforms exist where individuals seek employment or promote their skills.

Dover’s Integrated Approach

Dover addresses this fragmentation by leveraging AI to tap into platforms like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Triplebyte to identify candidates who align with specific job requirements.

AI-Powered Candidate Matching and Diversity Screening

The platform combines AI with recruiter preferences and parameters, such as diversity screening, to ensure candidate pools reflect a company’s inclusion goals.

Optimizing Candidate Communication

Dover utilizes data science and AI to refine recruiter communication, from initial job descriptions to offer and rejection letters. Even rejection letters are considered valuable, as these candidates represent potential prospects for future opportunities.

Scaling Recruitment Through Technology

“No human wants to write 100 cold emails per week, but on the other hand, there are many people to hit up and connect with,” Kolysh explains. “When a company is seeing a lot of growth, it needs to scale fast. You just can’t do that without technology anymore.” The founders, including Anvisha Pai (CTO) and George Carollo (COO), experienced these challenges firsthand at previous startups.

Opportunity and Potential Competition

Drawing parallels to the adoption of orchestration in sales, Dover has a strong opportunity to revolutionize recruitment. However, the emergence of competitors or the development of similar tools by existing candidate sourcing platforms remains a factor to monitor, as does the platform’s potential expansion into industries beyond technology.

Tiger Global’s Perspective

Dover’s current value lies in its usefulness to a specific market segment, which attracted the attention of Tiger Global.

A Full-Stack Solution

John Luttig, a partner at Founders Fund, highlighted that many existing recruitment tools are limited in scope, focusing on areas like scheduling or interviews. “It’s the full stack here that is appealing,” he stated. “And it’s automated, which is particularly valuable for early and mid-stage tech companies, to keep candidates from falling through the cracks. It also saves time from having to build up big recruiting departments. And because Dover owns all that work, those working in recruitment can instead focus on culture building, or assessing the candidates.”

Updated to note that Luttig is at Founders Fund, and to correct that the customer is ClearCo.