‘Wanted’ developed by ‘Wanted Labs’ is an employment recommendation service. The company has attracted investments of US$1.4m (KRW 1.7b) from KTB Network, Mirae Asset Venture Investment and Stone Bridge Capital. This has come four months after the release of their open-beta service.

Wanted allows experts in a field to recommend peers. If the lead is successful, the person who made the recommendation is rewarded with a recommendation fee. Companies from different fields have been using this service to actively recruit candidates recommended by subject matter experts with a high satisfaction of results experienced.

Progressing traditional offline recruitment and head-hunting business models to an online presence, the service is receiving favorable responses based on word-of-mouth between professional workers in the field of startup and IT.

The development team of Wanted consists of four co-founder who themselves were introduced through recommendations by acquaintances. In the early stages, the team secured the support of Maru 180 and D-Camp which provided the foundation for the service and initial customers. Wide attention was received when the company was identified in a global startup accelerator event, ‘Sparklab Class 5’. Additionally, in May the company was drafted into Google’s first startup foundation in Asia, ‘Campus Seoul’.

Lee Bok Gi from Wanted Lab explained that, “employment notices posted online has come about in the last 10 years. The future of employment processes will develop to support mobilization”. “Through this investment, we plan to further improve service quality, provide a base for global service expansion, and extend into more special occupational groups.” The launch of the Android version is expected in October.

Kim Chun Soo from KTM Network who lead the investment said, “The trend for companies that adapt to changing markets with agility is the preference for specialised recruitment over large scale open recruitment. We observed Wanted Labs had experience related to SNS core technology to adapt to this requirement.  We expect to achieve meaningful innovation  in the recruitment market through various trials.

Current, Wanted has provided over $580k (KRW 700m) in employment informations, connected over 180 positions to over 80 companies including NHN Entertainment, Walt Disney, Accenture, Coupang, Yogiyo and Yellow Mobile.

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