Image via Shutterstock.
Image via Shutterstock.

Poached Jobs, a Portland, Ore.-based job board and hiring platform for bars and restaurants, has raised $2.25 million in funding, roughly two-thirds of a planned offering amount of $3.3 million.

poached-jobs_400x400The funding consists of a new $1.5 million investment from the Oregon Angel Fund, disclosed in an SEC filing today. In addition, a previous convertible note of $750,000 — raised from the TiE Angels, Portland Seed Fund, Bend Venture Conference, and Cascade Angels — was converted into equity, bringing the total amount raised to $2.25 million in funding.

Poached Jobs is currently in conversations with three other unnamed investment groups to raise the remaining $1 million it hopes to raise, which it hopes to secure soon, said CEO Kirk Thornby in a phone interview today. The company will put its new money toward domestic market expansion.

Currently, Poached Jobs operates in twelve markets: Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, New York, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, L.A., Portland, and Seattle. However, the company hopes to move into many smaller cities in America.

“We’re looking to fill out the nation,” Thornby said.

With its initial $750,000, Poached Jobs launched its food-and-drink-industry specific hiring platform and job board website. The hiring platform for Poached Jobs, called BackOffice, houses all of an employer’s hiring files and communications, promising to “spare your inbox.” Through BackOffice, a restaurant hiring manager can look through a “flip book” of resumes to quickly view, sort, rate, annotate, and file them for easy identification of qualified candidates.

“Our strength is understanding how the industry works, since we are long-time restaurant professionals,” Thornby said. “We know how to reach job seekers and to match them with restaurants in a way that’s sensitive to the busy daily life of the industry.”

Drinks
(GeekWire File Photo)

This is important in an industry where the job turnover rate is 65 percent and rising. According to Thornby, restaurant jobs open up every day, but they are difficult to fill because hiring managers get flooded with unqualified applicants. The whole idea behind Poached Jobs, Thornby said, is to prevent busy restauranteurs from having to spend their time individually opening and then reading the “90 percent of resumes that are completely useless.”

For a restaurant to post a job, Poached Jobs charges $30 per job or, for multiple jobs, a variable discounted rate, according to their website. Once up, a job posting will be active for 30 days and the resumes attached to it will be stored for 2 years, helping hiring managers both hire and review qualified candidates.

“We’ve grown to have about 10,000 restaurant customers around the nation,” Thornby said.

For restaurant job seekers, Poached Jobs’ service is free. Applicants can look through all available job posts and send in their resumes through the Poached Jobs system, where they will be stored as long as the applicant’s account remains active. Poached Jobs will keep track of all jobs applied for, all jobs recently viewed, and user “starred” jobs that are of particular interest, making the process of searching for a restaurant job that much easier.

“We have over 300,000 unique visitors to our site every month,” Thornby said. “That’s amounted to 1 million total resumes submitted in response to 60,000 jobs posted since our inception.”

Poached Jobs says it will continue target restaurants and food industry job seekers as it puts its new round of funding to use, expanding across the nation.

Editor’s Note: Post updated Feb. 9 to clarify details of Poached Jobs’ funding.

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