Targeting the pain points in the overseas recruitment market, this "AI headhunter" app has received investment from media giant Bertelsmann.

Recently, an "AI headhunter" application targeting the global recruitment market has caught the attention of the capital market. Asian startup NGA announced that its artificial intelligence recruitment platform, HelloBoss, has completed its Series A financing. The investment was led by Bertelsmann Group through BAI Capital. The funds will be mainly used for technological R & D of AI Agents and front - end and back - end products, global market expansion, and personnel expansion for multiple positions. Previously, HelloBoss had received three rounds of investment from dozens of well - known Japanese angel investors, Yunqi Capital, and venture capital firm GOLDEN EGG.

HelloBoss was first launched in 2023. In December 2025, it introduced the AI Agent dedicated to the recruitment scenario. With its self - patented AI matching algorithm, it automates the recruitment process, thereby improving the efficiency of two - way communication between enterprises and job seekers and the success rate of matching. Currently, there are over 500,000 online job openings on the HelloBoss platform. Its clients include many global enterprises such as Alibaba, SHEIN, DIOR, Hilton, Google, Hitachi, Lawson, and Suntory.

Wang Qin, the founder of NGA, worked at the internationally renowned HR company Recruit Group for five years. He founded the overseas platform for entertainment illustrators and voice actors, JCCD.com, and published the book "Illustrated Guide to China's Mobile Internet" overseas. The company's technical advisor is Dr. Xue Yanbo, the former chief scientist of BOSS Zhipin. The development team mainly comes from companies such as ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, Didi, Indeed, and the Microsoft Research Institute.

1. Creating a "Fast, Efficient, Cost - effective" "AI Headhunter" in a Seller's Employment Market

As aging becomes a common phenomenon in more and more countries, problems such as insufficient supply of young labor and rising labor costs are becoming increasingly prominent. Taking neighboring East Asian countries as an example, the 2024 "White Paper on Labor Economy" released by Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare shows that in 2023, the average effective job - offer - to - applicant ratio in Japan was 1.31, meaning that there were 1.3 job openings for every applicant. The shortage of labor in enterprises was "more serious than before the COVID - 19 pandemic," and the effective job - offer - to - applicant ratio for fresh graduates was even as high as six times.

The long - standing employment market with a supply exceeding demand has given rise to a large - scale and highly profitable headhunting industry. "In Japan, even blue - collar jobs like taxi drivers require the participation of headhunting companies," Wang Qin introduced. Currently, there are over 30,000 headhunting companies in Japan, with about 65,000 practitioners, and the market size exceeds $10 billion. Moreover, the average fee rate of Japanese headhunters is 35%, the highest in the world.

*Number of Japanese headhunting companies - Data from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare

The long 2 - 3 - month recruitment cycle and the low level of informatization of recruitment channels are also problems that trouble Japanese HR professionals. This gave Wang Qin an entrepreneurial opportunity: "If we use a coordinate axis to measure the business prospects of AI Agents, with the horizontal axis representing the market size and the vertical axis representing the gap between AI capabilities and the current market technology status, then a human resources market like Japan's is a great track, because the market size is large enough, and the new - generation AI Agent technology has greater advantages compared to Japan's existing traditional labor - intensive headhunting companies based on spreadsheets and CRM tools."

Wang Qin introduced that the newly released HelloBoss equipped with an AI Agent is positioned as a "fast, efficient, cost - effective" "AI headhunter" that can independently complete 90% of the process work between job seekers and recruiters in the recruitment scenario.

Specifically, recruiters can complete one - click registration based on the pre - built database of 5.5 million Japanese enterprises on the platform. At the stage of creating a job opening, the AI will automatically edit the job information from uploaded files or other URL links into compliant content, automatically generate optimized job information with appropriate wording and in the local format, and complete the job posting. The AI will also learn the enterprise's unstructured preferences for talents, conduct intelligent matching and evaluation of candidates, provide explanations for the matching, and offer full - process chat assistance and interview record sharing functions, significantly shortening the recruitment process.

"The traditional subscription - based model is only responsible for the usage frequency, while the results - based model must be responsible for the 'delivery quality,'" Wang Qin said. Different from some recruitment platforms in the market that focus on matching job seekers and recruiters, HelloBoss hopes to track the entire recruitment process to obtain data on the final recruitment results and optimize the algorithm and matching capabilities accordingly. Therefore, different from the subscription - based payment model adopted by most similar products, HelloBoss offers a results - based payment service package. Enterprises can pay according to the self - set annual salary percentage rate or a fixed amount after successfully hiring suitable candidates.

In the past, headhunting companies generally charged enterprises a fixed cooperation fee rate according to the contract. In Wang Qin's view, it was difficult to make flexible adjustments according to the importance and urgency of different positions. HelloBoss is the first platform in Japan that can directly post headhunting positions, and it allows different fee rates to be set for each position. The Agent will also provide suggestions for the optimal fee rate, reducing the overall recruitment cost by about 20% and shortening the recruitment cycle by more than half. In case of an employee's resignation within six months after starting work, the platform provides a refund mechanism, and the Agent will try to select the most suitable candidates in the game.

This charging model is widely welcomed by enterprises in Japan. The Japanese recruitment market itself has great potential. The market size of pre - paid recruitment advertisements alone has reached $10 billion, and the market size of successful - payment (similar to headhunting) has reached as high as $12 billion. In addition, about 10 million people in Japan have the intention to change jobs every year, and 3.3 million people successfully change jobs. Among them, 800,000 people use headhunting channels, driving the annual growth rate of the headhunting market to exceed 7%. It is the most expensive human resources market in the world.

"In Japan, even blue - collar workers use headhunting companies. The utilization rate of headhunters among job - changers reaches 25%. Whether it is a large company or a small and medium - sized enterprise, cooperating with a headhunting company is a time - consuming process. On HelloBoss, they no longer need to go through the average two - month - long contract - signing and job - posting process. The time is shortened to 30 minutes," Wang Qin introduced.

On the job - seeker side, in response to the high - mobility young people's need for frequent job - hunting, HelloBoss provides functions such as resume analysis, recommended matching jobs, and natural - language conversations, greatly simplifying the job - hunting process through AI algorithm capabilities. "Whether users want to find a better job or change careers, they can directly tell the Agent their requirements through a conversation. The Agent will stand on the user's side, based on the user's needs and personal abilities, to find highly - matched jobs from over 500,000 job openings, helping them discover more unexpected opportunities," Wang Qin said.

For desired jobs, HelloBoss provides customized generation services for standard Japanese resumes, job - hunting photos, self - introductions, and cover letters for each position. Job seekers only need to drag and drop on the map - based interactive interface to complete resume creation and submission within one minute, or they can submit applications to multiple positions with one click.

"Most current products are still at the stage of being toC or toB automation tools, but HelloBoss has established a closed - loop from the C - end to the B - end. The Agent itself completes the delivery of the entire recruitment chain. It is the world's first platform - type product that has fully automated the 'AI headhunter,' covers Web + iOS + Android clients, and supports results - based payment," Wang Qin said. This is mainly due to the rapid development of generative large models in recent years, which is at least three years ahead of Japanese peers, and relevant patents have been applied for.

2. Revenue Increased 10 - fold in Two Years of Launch, Attempting to Reshape the Global Headhunting Industry

Currently, HelloBoss has completed five major version iterations, and more functions such as real - time interview guidance and review will be launched in the future.

Wang Qin revealed that HelloBoss achieved commercialization in its first year of launch, and its revenue increased 10 - fold year - on - year in 2024. "Based on the revenue from the newly launched payment package, it is possible to achieve profitability as early as 2026."

After completing the Series A financing, NGA plans to allocate a portion of the funds to technological R & D such as model training and infrastructure optimization for HelloBoss, and another portion to expand the team size. It will recruit senior headhunters to empower model training with industry knowledge, improve delivery quality, and optimize product logic.

In Wang Qin's view, in the AI era, competitive headhunters either have rich experience to lead the advancement of AI models or are good at embracing change and collaborating efficiently with models. "Currently, an average human headhunter can only complete two business deals per month. We hope that with the assistance of AI headhunters, in five years, a human headhunter can command 100 or even more AI headhunters. The AI Agent is responsible for 95% of the high - frequency, highly - regular process work, and human headhunters only need to complete 5% of the low - frequency, high - value judgment and negotiation work. While job seekers and recruiters can get fast, efficient, cost - effective services, headhunters can also turn their knowledge into assets and earn higher incomes," Wang Qin said.

In addition, the HelloBoss team plans to expand internationally. The newly launched official website already includes a world - map mode, focusing on regions with a high degree of aging and an imbalanced employment market supply and demand. "This is also one of the reasons why we chose to 'ally' with Bertelsmann. We hope to leverage their resources in the European market," Wang Qin said.

Recently, HelloBoss has cooperated with the US HR unicorn company Deel Inc. to launch the "Global Remote Hire" service. Enterprises can remotely hire overseas talents online for a three - month employment period without establishing an overseas legal entity, and complete the one - stop process of talent screening, contract signing, and salary payment. Currently, some overseas - going enterprises have used this service to quickly build their early overseas teams.

Wang Qin said: "We hope to be an Airbnb in the recruitment scenario in the context of globalization, enabling people from any country to quickly find suitable jobs in any region. There is currently no such product in the market, but the data processing and analysis capabilities of generative AI models in this era are fully capable of helping us achieve this vision."