Startups struggle to recruit the talent they want. Existing recruitment platforms are heavily focused on large corporations, and the acceptance rate for scout offers on these platforms is only around 10-20%.
"There was a common complaint from all startup CEOs: it was incredibly difficult to recruit the talent they wanted."
This is the background behind Park Sang-min, CEO of GroupByHR, who founded the startup recruitment platform "GroupBy" in April 2022. Currently, GroupBy, an AI-based recruitment platform specialized for startups, has achieved a 57% "offer acceptance rate" and, with industry-low commissions of 4-6%, is addressing information asymmetry in the startup recruitment market.
GroupBy, co-founded by CEO Lim Jin-ha (Business) and CEO Park Sang-min (Product), has grown to 65,000 job seekers, 1,600 clients, and 8,000 job postings. Furthermore, its sales are projected to increase 280% year-over-year, from KRW 500 million in 2024 to KRW 1.4 billion in 2025.
"Large corporate-focused platforms can't solve startup hiring problems."
This market was a gap that CEO Park Sang-min discovered while interviewing startup CEOs while dreaming of starting a business while attending GIST (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology).
"As soon as I entered GIST, I dreamed of starting a business. As an undergraduate, I repeatedly explored and experimented with startup ideas, and had many opportunities to interview startup CEOs."
The common issue that all representatives complained about was the 'recruitment crisis'.
"Why do startups struggle to attract talent? When I pondered this question, I concluded that the problem lies in the operational structure of existing recruitment platforms, which are centered around large corporations. I concluded that the startup recruitment market is a niche market, but one that no one has properly addressed."
Afterwards, they divided their roles into ‘Business (CEO Im Jin-ha)’ and ‘Product (CEO Park Sang-min)’ and began operating the company in earnest.
In July 2024, the company secured Pre-A funding from Primer, Hallym University Technology Holdings, and Angel Lounge, and will begin a Series A investment round in January 2026. He explained, "We plan to raise over 3 billion won by May 2026."
Built-in AI automatically matches 77% of job postings.
GroupBy's growth engine lies in solving problems by rapidly utilizing and internalizing AI technology.
"We've built all the AI features of our current recruitment platform ourselves. We plan to continue internalizing these capabilities."
The service consists of three steps: ‘Find Talent – Send Proposal – Verify’, and among these, the first step has a high automation rate.
"Of the 1,800 job postings currently posted, 1,430, or 77%, are automatically recruiting talent. Companies can simply post job postings and continue to find the right talent."
A total of 15,000 scout suggestions have been sent, more than half of which are AI-generated messages.
"We plan to achieve 'fully automated' talent acquisition by 2026. Since some companies prefer to handle job offers and screenings themselves, we plan to offer automated features only to companies that wish to do so."
Industry-low commission rates of 4-6%. The secret to acceptance rates is condition matching.
Among the company's services, 'Scout', which supports 'outbound recruitment', has completed over 400 recruitments to date.
"'Scout' operates on a success fee system, boasting an industry-low commission rate of 4-6%."
The metric CEO Park Sang-min emphasized was the job offer acceptance rate. He explained, "It's currently maintaining an average of 57%," adding, "Considering that the acceptance rate for general recruitment platforms is in the 10-20% range, this is more than double."
The secret to the high acceptance rate is the ‘job search condition matching system.’
"We designed our product to ensure job seekers receive job offers tailored to their specific needs. When registering a profile, we collect job search criteria as required information. When companies send out job offers, we check how well they match each individual's requirements and then ask them to write a description."
Eliminating crawling, aiming for 60% of the startup market by 2027
GroupBy promotes 'direct upload job postings'.
Many competing platforms crawl external job postings and then display them. This leads to user inconvenience. Instead of using a single platform to search for jobs with a prepared resume, they have to navigate multiple websites. We only display postings uploaded directly by GroupBy, without any crawling.
He emphasized, “What’s important on a recruitment platform is job search experience satisfaction,” and “I believe we provide a differentiated service both quantitatively (document screening pass rate/offer acceptance rate) and qualitatively.”
"Our short-term goal at GroupBy is to become the number one startup recruiting company in Korea. We expect to capture over 60% of the startup recruiting market by 2027."
GroupBy's hiring process is unique.
"All of our company's executives and employees were hired through our GroupBy channel. Since we operate the platform directly, we've been able to recruit the most notable talent from the pool of candidates we've hired."
CEO Park Sang-min suggested three key elements for recruiting AI engineers: "challenging goals, data, and a transition to business performance."
500,000 job seekers and KRW 25 billion in annual sales by 2028
The 2028 goals presented by CEO Park Sang-min are specific.
"We aim to provide a service that allows you to recruit the talent you need as quickly and easily as possible, whenever you need it. More important than any ideal is solving our customers' problems. Our goal is to become the best company in Korea at solving our corporate clients' recruitment challenges."
The quantitative goals are 600,000 job seeker members, 13,000 corporate clients, and KRW 25 billion in annual sales by 2028.
Regarding exit strategies, he said, “If they are effective strategies during the growth process, both IPO and M&A can be considered.”
Armed with a 57% proposal acceptance rate and proprietary AI technology, GroupBy is expected to capture a 60% share of the startup recruitment market by 2027.
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