Jack & Jill raises $20 million to bring conversational AI to job-hunting

Between infinitely scrolling job boards and the surprising rise of fake applicants using AI, job-searching has become one of the most surprising experiences the internet has to offer. Listings are posted and reposted on different platforms as applications go unanswered, creating a spam-like flood of activity on both sides.

“If you put a job on LinkedIn, you can get 1,000 people applying for that job within the first six hours,” says Matt Wilson, a London-based serial entrepreneur. “Some companies don’t even review applicants for those jobs, because the signal to word ratio is very, very low.”

Wilson’s new solution is Jack and JillA new platform that uses conversational AI to reinvent the hiring process from the ground up. The company today announced $20 million in seed funding led by EU investor Crendum, but it’s been little secret. The service is already live in London, where the outfit has amassed nearly 50,000 users — and Wilson wants to use the cash flow to expand into the US and take Jack & Jill to a new level.

“There hasn’t been a big change in how people find jobs since LinkedIn, and indeed the way people find jobs, came on the scene 20 years ago,” says Wilson. His bet is, with AI chatbots changing workplaces around the world, now might be the time to shake things up.

As you might guess from the name, Jack & Jill is a two-part platformer. The “JACK” side of the platform handles the applicant side, providing users with a shortlist of roles drawn from their online database before delivering a 20-minute, AI-driven profile interview. From there, Jack can be used for mock interviews or more involved professional coaching. “Jill” works with employers, creates a profile of a specific role and promotes candidates that match its requirements. As with LinkedIn, part of the goal is for both recruiters and hiring managers to maintain an active presence on their respective apps, tweaking the app as the players need it. The service takes a standard commission from any successful hire, and as the platform expands, Wilson hopes to make Jack and Jill indispensable to both parties.

It might sound like a standard recruiting system with a little AI sprinkled on top, but Wilson thinks conversational chatbots are more important than a simple matching algorithm. By building the process around chatbot interviews, he believes he’s found a scalable alternative to the endless rotation of listings and resumes, potentially reinventing fundamental elements of the contemporary hiring process.

Using AI systems for first-round interviews is increasingly common in many parts of the world – especially in China, where many multinational corporations Use practice to assign local roles. But while a surprise interview with an AI hiring manager may seem isolated, Wilson hopes Jack and Jill’s approach will lead to more intelligence being applied to job hiring overall.

“I think the way we’re mapped to the companies we work for and vice versa, it’s very inefficient,” says Wilson. “There are billions of people out there who could have better jobs. And that’s a mission worth working on.”

An earlier version of this piece was published with an incorrect image in the title. TechCrunch regrets the error.