Blind revamps job matching service to rival LinkedIn

Teamblind Inc., the developer of South Korea’s homegrown anonymous professional community app Blind, will reach out to a broader job-seeking population with its revamped job-matching platform and aggressive global expansion, the company’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer Moon Sung-uk said on Monday.

“We will improve the outdated, closed job matching process to reach out to more companies and job seekers,” said Moon. “Blind’s recruitment platform boasts a massive user base, allowing it to expose job posts even to millions of passive job seekers.”

Teamblind, which also goes by Team Blind, recently revamped Blind’s spinoff recruitment app, called blind Hire, with some upgraded features. In the previous version, only companies can offer jobs to app users, but in the new version, any Blind user can check out job posts.

Its hiring app is different from other recruitment apps that are mostly sought after by active job seekers and human resources (HR) officers, said Moon. The increased access to job postings is expected to entice the interest of passive job seekers, expanding a cooperate talent pool.  

Nealy 90% of employees of Korea’s top 1,000 companies in terms of enterprise value use Blind, according to the company. Its monthly active users (MAUs) are estimated at more than 5 million -- all prospective candidates companies can reach out to.

Job hunters also can find out more information about companies they are interested in via the app, which provides subscribers’ reviews of their companies’ corporate culture, salaries, benefits and more.

As Blind’s user base has seen rapid growth among US Big Tech company employees, Teamblind also plans to enhance its global business.

“We will analyze subscribers’ employers and their app usage patterns with the artificial intelligence (AI) technology to enhance tailored services (for global subscribers),” said Moon.

Blind first hit the Korean app market in 2013, and its global version was launched two years later. It provides an anonymous forum and community for verified professionals to discuss various issues, ranging from their companies to broader industry issues and even politics. The workplace social platform instantly gained popularity among professionals. 

The company successfully concluded its $37 million Series C round funding in May 2021. It planned to use the funds to speed up its global expansion including its Nasdaq debut, which was originally scheduled for 2025.

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.