Beamery: Helping employers recruit, retain and upskill a productive and engaged workforce through technology
The investment: In 2021, Teachers’ Venture Growth led a US$138 million Series C funding round for Beamery, a U.K.-based company that has developed an AI-powered talent-management platform.
Record-high job vacancies. Losing workers to the “Great Resignation.” Pressure to improve diversity and inclusion. These are just a few of the issues facing employers as they look to build and manage their workforces in one of the most challenging labour markets in recent memory. Some difficulties—including staffing shortages in industries like hospitality and healthcare—may fade in the post-pandemic period. But all employers are contending with longer-term trends, such as the need to upskill workers for a more digital future. Increasingly, companies view building a robust talent pipeline as a strategic imperative.
That’s where Beamery comes in. The company’s founders, Abakar and Sultan Saidov, grew up in a first-generation U.K. immigrant household and saw firsthand how a person’s place of birth or what school they attended can influence their career opportunities. Driven by a desire to level the playing field and create more opportunities for meaningful work, the Saidovs joined with another partner, Mike Paterson, to develop a comprehensive Talent Lifecycle Management platform called Beamery.
Beamery uses data and artificial intelligence to improve employee recruitment, retention and upskilling. The company’s technology enables hiring teams to interact with a wider talent pool and to better identify—and close—critical skills gaps. It also strives to make the hiring process more equitable, by reducing bias and helping talent teams drive and report on DE&I strategies at each stage of the talent lifecycle. In short, Beamery’s platform makes it easier for hiring managers to identify skilled, high-potential candidates, regardless of background.
We invested in Beamery because it’s well positioned to provide long-term growth in this talent-first environment. Beamery’s vision of using technology to build better businesses and to shape the future of work is truly innovative. That helps explain why its clients—mainly companies with 5,000 or more employees—include some of the world’s best-known employers, from AstraZeneca to Uber. Last year, Beamery helped companies in more than 20 industries hire some 1.5 million people, up from about 500,000 hires two years earlier.
Managing talent is about more than recruitment. Beamery also helps its clients retain and engage existing employees by pinpointing opportunities for reskilling and internal mobility. One Beamery Fortune 500 customer says it has seen a 250% improvement in employee tenure since it began using the platform.
As companies automate their recruitment processes and shift towards hiring for skills, there is a need to address unconscious bias and any unethical practices that have previously existed in recruitment. Beamery helps organizations navigate the changing regulatory environment in AI, and work towards creating a more diverse workforce. By default, Beamery’s AI helps businesses progress DE&I efforts, making the global talent network more accessible and fairer.
“Ontario Teachers’ has a stellar reputation for identifying and investing in businesses that are defining new categories and disrupting traditional ways of working. The world’s leading brands are creating the new future of work and Beamery’s cutting-edge solutions and clear vision for transforming talent will provide their competitive edge. This investment from Ontario Teachers’ enables us to scale rapidly, as we continue to lead this exciting new space in enterprise technology,”
Abakar Saidov, Co-Founder and CE
Beamery