Job Forward launches Startup Essence to transform social media recruitment, following a 6-figure seed funding from COENT Venture Partners

Singapore, 3 February 2015—Job Forward, Singapore’s first online social recruitment platform, has today announced the launch of Startup Essence, a service that empowers startups and SMEs to create visually stunning recruitment pages to attract and engage talent. Job Forward aims to establish a new channel for startups and SMEs to reach out to the perfect fit for their company culture. The Singapore-based startup received a 6-figure seed investment from COENT Venture Partners.

Says co-founder and CEO of COENT Venture Partners, Hideki Fujita, “With Job Forward CEO Yoshiaki Ieda’s global experience in HR and marketing, we have great confidence that he will be able to drive Job Forward towards innovating social recruiting in Asia. We strongly believe in Job Forward’s initiative to take advantage of the space between social media and online recruitment to grow a solution that we see in a lot of startups and young firms face—they simply are not able to cast a wide enough net to seek out suitable hires. Startup Essence delivers a solution that is extremely intuitive, but fresh—which is something we like seeing at COENT.”

According to the Manpower Group’s survey in 2014, 36% of employers are having difficulties finding candidates to fill open positions^[1], with particular issues faced by the startup community such as a limited network to tap for finding talent[2]. Job Forward aims to solve this crippling hiring issue by addressing an obstacle that is oftentimes overlooked—the importance that company culture plays into attracting passionate talent.

Startup Essence is a new tool provided by Job Forward that allows startups and SMEs to create a customizable, visually impactful company recruitment website that showcases key characteristics of the company to increase the appeal of the company to potential new hires, and to make it more easy for new hires to discern the chemistry that might pull them to one company over another.

“After over ten years of global experience in the HR industry, I came across companies struggling with the same problem again and again,” says Yoshiaki. “The team at Job Forward is very excited to introduce a game changer to online recruitment—to not only integrate social media and online recruitment, but also to introduce a solution for companies that are struggling to engage with the right pool of talent.”

Job Forward first garnered attention at Echelon’s 2014 Startup Marketplace, where it was handpicked by e27 to showcase its offerings. Since Echelon, Job Forward has bulked up its profile even more by securing seed funding from COENT Venture Partners and by adding a new tool to the referral-driven online recruitment platform. With the goal to disrupt the traditional recruitment process, Job Forward aims to redefine the way that companies seek out and engage new hires.

About Job Forward

Job Forward is a Singapore based startup that provides an online social recruitment platform to empower employers to attract passionate talent through personal referrals and a visually stunning website, improving the ability for companies to build the right teams. Upon the entry of Echelon’s 2014 Startup Marketplace, Job Forward was very well received, walking away with the People’s Choice Awards and ranking within the top 85^th percentile of startups at Echelon 2014.

To learn more about Job forward, please visit http://job-fw.sg/.

To learn more about Startup Essence, please visit http://job-fw.sg/startup-essence.

Media contacts:

PRecious Communications for Job Forward

Email: jobforward@preciouscomms.com

Phone: +65-3151 4760

^[1] http://www.manpowergroup.us/campaigns/talent-shortage-2014/

2http://www.alleywatch.com/2014/12/4-startup-hiring-challenges-and-how-to-overcome-them/