Highr Pattern Ltd., which runs a recruiting site called Woo that matches employers with passive job seekers, is joining the artificial intelligence parade with an automated headhunter that automatically scouts, approaches and connects candidates with potential employers.

The company said its “Helena” assistant eliminates much of the trial-and-error of the recruitment process by using machine learning to connect the best candidates with opportunities at scale.

Woo also said it closed a $7 million series A investment round led by David Alliance CBE, with participation from existing investors. The new round brings the company’s total funding to $11.4 million. The money will be used “to further enhance Woo’s technology and fuel the company’s U.S. expansion,” the company said.

Woo launched early last year with an approach to recruiting that turns the standard process upside down. Instead of posting available positions for candidates to pursue, Woo lets candidates specify their job-seeking criteria such as salary and location, adds background information from sites such as LinkedIn, Github and Stack Overflow, strips out personal identifiers and presents the anonymous profile to prospective employers. It also provides candidates with information about potential jobs, employers, culture, funding and other background. If the job seeker asks for an introduction, Woo enables a direct contact.

The service currently targets only technology professionals in the San Francisco and New York areas, although the company said it plans to expand to other regions and industries. Seattle and Boston are on the regional short list, and professionals in marketing, sales and general business jobs will be the next job categories targeted.

The AI assistant headhunter collects data from Woo’s job-seeker database, employers and external online sources, determines candidate interest and arranges an introduction without human intervention. “Helena scouts and searches for the right candidates, approaches them, sells them on the opportunity and only refers candidates who show interest,” said Woo Chief Executive Liran Kotzer.

The Tel Aviv-based company built the knowledge base by interviewing headhunters to understand how they make decisions, Kotzer said. “The performance of Helena is twice that of any recruiter because the amount of data is much deeper than any human can process,” he said. Woo claims that more than half of candidates hunted by Helena in its tests eventually interview with the recruiting company, compared with about 20 percent in a conventional recruitment setting.

Woo said its database currently comprises about 20,000 engineers, 80 percent of whom are not actively in the market. “They’re ready to upgrade their job but don’t want to do anything proactively,” Kotzer said. Common concerns include potential conflicts with a current employer and the annoyance of unsolicited requests from recruiters.

For employers, Helena provides real-time visibility into how prospective candidates typically react to job opportunities, including reasons why they chose not to pursue other offers. Employers can also see statistics on their performance relative to similar companies.

Helena is available immediately. Employers can choose either a tiered-subscription or a pay-per-placement model. Pricing wasn’t specified. The service is free to job candidates, who can use Helena as their virtual agent.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net