Hired

The People Building It

Attribute	Value
Company Name	Hired
Tagline	A curated talent marketplace connecting tech and sales professionals with innovative companies.
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, United States
Founded	2012
Stage	Exited
Business Model	Marketplace
Industry	HR / Future of Work
Technology	Software (Non-AI)
Geography	Global / Remote-First
Growth Profile	Venture Scale
Founding Team	Co-Founders (3+)
Funding Label	Undisclosed

Links

• Website: https://hired.com/
• LinkedIn: https://jp.linkedin.com/company/hired-com

The Short Version

Hired operates a curated, two-sided marketplace for tech and sales talent, a business now embedded within the global HR services ecosystem of LHH Recruitment Solutions, part of The Adecco Group [Perplexity Sonar Pro]. Founded in 2012 as DeveloperAuction, the platform's core proposition has remained consistent: to streamline the hiring process for high-demand roles by presenting employers with a pre-screened, high-intent pool of candidates while offering those candidates salary transparency and control over their job search [dexteragent.ai] [startupintros.com]. The founding team brought significant marketplace-building experience, with Matt Mickiewicz having co-founded SitePoint and 99designs, and Douglas Feirstein previously founding the cloud contact center platform LiveOps [Wikipedia]. As an independent entity, Hired raised over $70 million in venture capital from investors including New Enterprise Associates and Google Ventures, before its acquisition by Vettery in 2020 and subsequent rebranding under the LHH umbrella [Crunchbase, 2014] [Perplexity Sonar Pro].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core business description and founding team background corroborated by multiple independent sources; funding round details confirmed by Crunchbase and TechCrunch.

The Company in Brief

Hired was founded in San Francisco in 2012 as DeveloperAuction, a marketplace where software engineers could auction their skills to the highest-bidding employers [TechCrunch, 2014]. The founding team comprised Matt Mickiewicz, Douglas Feirstein, and Allan Grant, three serial entrepreneurs who brought experience from building and scaling online marketplaces [Wikipedia].

Its corporate journey is defined by a series of strategic acquisitions and integrations within the broader HR services ecosystem. In November 2020, Hired was acquired by Vettery, a competing talent marketplace that had itself been acquired by The Adecco Group in 2018 for over $100 million [Wikipedia]. The combined entity was subsequently rebranded as Hired in April 2021 and now operates as the tech- and sales-focused talent marketplace within LHH Recruitment Solutions, a subsidiary of Adecco [craft.co].

Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by multiple public sources including TechCrunch, Wikipedia, and company profiles.

What They Have Built

The core proposition is a curated, two-sided marketplace for specialized technical and sales talent. Hired positions itself as a more efficient alternative to traditional recruiters and broad job boards by focusing on a pre-screened, high-intent candidate pool [company26095.rssing.com]. For employers, the platform delivers a curated list of candidates who have already expressed interest in new roles and are ready to interview [SmartRecruiters]. Candidates, who use the service for free, are presented with salary ranges upfront and retain control over which companies they choose to engage with [startupintros.com].

The platform's operational mechanics rely on a combination of human curation and software automation. An in-house team screens candidate profiles, while proprietary algorithms handle the initial matching between candidate preferences and employer requirements [SmartRecruiters]. The employer-facing product suite includes tools for sourcing, conducting technical assessments and coding challenges, and hosting virtual recruiting events [craft.co].

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Product claims are consistent across multiple secondary sources and the company's own help center, but specific technical implementation details and recent, named customer deployments are not publicly verified.

Market Size and Demand

The market for tech talent acquisition is defined by a persistent imbalance between demand and supply. Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) estimated the global recruitment market at $652 billion in 2023 [Staffing Industry Analysts, 2023]. A projection from Grand View Research pegged the global digital recruitment platform market size at $28.5 billion in 2022, forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% from 2023 to 2030 [Grand View Research, 2023].

Demand drivers remain robust. Research from LHH indicates that 73% of employers are undertaking or considering layoffs in 2024, with drivers including AI and automation, skills mismatches, and strategic shifts [LHH, 2024]. This creates a dual-sided opportunity for a curated marketplace: it can serve companies seeking to acquire new, AI-relevant skills while also capturing a wave of high-caliber, recently available talent seeking new roles.

Metric	Value
Global Recruitment Market (2023)	$652B
Digital Recruitment Platforms (2022)	$28.5B
Forecast CAGR (2023-2030)	7.2%

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing figures are from named third-party reports (SIA, Grand View Research), but specific segmentation for tech-sales curated marketplaces is not publicly available.

Who Else Is Fighting for This

Hired operates within a mature and fragmented segment of the HR technology market. Incumbent generalist job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed compete on volume and brand recognition, but lack Hired's curated, high-intent focus. Specialist challengers in the curated marketplace space, such as Toptal and Turing, present the most direct comparison.

Company	Positioning	Stage / Funding	Notable Differentiator
Hired	Curated, two-sided marketplace for tech and sales talent, integrated within LHH/Adecco.	Exited (acquired by Vettery, 2020).	AI-driven matching and salary transparency within a larger corporate recruiting ecosystem.
Toptal	Elite freelance network for top-tier software developers, designers, and finance experts.	Private, backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Adam D'Angelo.	Rigorous, multi-stage screening process (reportedly <3% acceptance) for a vetted freelance talent pool.
Turing	AI-powered platform for sourcing, vetting, and managing remote software developers globally.	Private, $140M+ in funding from investors like WestBridge Capital.	Focus on long-term, full-time remote engineering roles with an automated vetting and matching engine.
Arc.dev	Remote job platform and community for software developers, emphasizing developer experience.	Private, Seed and Series A funding from Y Combinator, NFX, others.	Community-driven platform with developer profiles, salary tools, and a focus on remote-first roles.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitor profiles and funding stages are confirmed via Crunchbase and public materials; Hired's post-acquisition strategic positioning is inferred from corporate structure.

Opportunity

The headline opportunity is for Hired to become the category-defining, two-sided talent platform for the knowledge economy, moving beyond a transactional job board to own the entire workflow from candidate discovery to onboarding. The evidence for this outcome is its foundational position within a global HR services giant, LHH Recruitment Solutions, part of The Adecco Group [LHH].

Scenario	What happens	Catalyst	Why it's plausible
Enterprise Platform Integration	Hired's matching and assessment tools become the default sourcing layer embedded within LHH's global enterprise contracts.	A formal product bundling or integration announcement from LHH.	LHH's parent, Adecco, is a global staffing leader with deep Fortune 500 relationships.
Geographic Expansion via Parent Network	Hired's model is rolled out to new international markets using Adecco's existing local infrastructure.	Launch of localized Hired platforms in key European or APAC tech hubs under the LHH brand.	The 2021 rebranding of Vettery into Hired under LHH was a consolidation move aimed at creating a unified global tech talent brand.

Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- The core opportunity narrative is supported by public sources detailing the company's acquisition history and integration into LHH.

Sources

1. [Perplexity Sonar Pro] Hired (hired.com) is a tech- and sales-focused talent marketplace | https://dexteragent.ai/companies/hired-1771897087
2. [dexteragent.ai] Hired Company Profile | https://dexteragent.ai/companies/hired-1771897087
3. [startupintros.com] Hired Inc. Profile | https://startupintros.com/orgs/hired-inc
4. [Wikipedia] Hired (company) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hired_(company)
5. [TechCrunch, 2014] DeveloperAuction Rebrands As Hired, Raises $15M Series A To Connect Tech Talent With Companies | https://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/10/30/hired-com-has-built-what-every-tech-company-wants-a-pipeline-of-top-technical-talent/
6. [Crunchbase, 2014] Hired Funding Rounds | https://www.crunchbase.com/
7. [craft.co] Hired Company Profile | https://craft.co/hired
8. [company26095.rssing.com] Hired Platform Focus | https://company26095.rssing.com/chan-75244031/article91.html
9. [SmartRecruiters] Hired Product Overview | https://www.smartrecruiters.com/
10. [jobs.hired.com, retrieved 2024] Search jobs | Hired | https://jobs.hired.com/search
11. [Staffing Industry Analysts, 2023] Global Recruitment Market Estimate | https://www2.staffingindustry.com/
12. [Grand View Research, 2023] Digital Recruitment Platforms Market Size Report | https://www.grandviewresearch.com/
13. [LHH, 2024] 2024 Workforce Insights Report | https://www.lhh.com/en-us/about-us/our-story
14. [LHH] Our story | LHH | https://www.lhh.com/en-us/about-us/our-story