Full-Time
Posted on 10/31/2025
Referral-based platform for tech startup recruitment
$120k - $160k/yr
San Francisco, CA, USA
In Person
Must be in-office 5 days per week at Jackson Square, San Francisco.
Paraform is a referral-based recruitment platform for the tech startup scene. It lets individuals earn money by referring candidates from their personal and professional networks to open roles at startups. Startups post jobs on the platform and offer referral bounties, while individuals browse listings, share unique referral links, and get paid if a referred candidate is hired. The platform earns by charging companies to post jobs and by taking a cut of the referral rewards. Unlike traditional recruiting firms, Paraform leverages personal networks to surface candidates, providing a transparent, straightforward process where both referrers and startups can see the steps and payments. The goal is to efficiently connect startups with top talent through trusted referrals, creating a scalable marketplace that benefits both sides: people who want extra income and startups looking for quality hires.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
Series B
Total Funding
$65M
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2023
Help us improve and share your feedback! Did you find this helpful?
Flexible Work Hours
Paraform, a recruiting platform connecting tech companies with independent recruiters, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Scale Venture Partners. The round comes less than a year after the company's $20 million Series A. Founded by CEO John Kim, Paraform operates a marketplace linking high-growth tech firms like Palantir and Cursor with expert recruiters. The platform provides "agentic" AI tools for automated sourcing and candidate matching, whilst allowing recruiters to focus on evaluating soft skills and closing candidates. The funding will scale Paraform's AI capabilities and expand its client base. The company reports clients are hiring up to three times faster than with traditional agencies. Recent successes include helping AI accounting firm Basis make 13 critical hires during a period of rapid growth.
ParaAI Matches: a second placement engine for your candidates. Karan Parikh Founding Engineer March 2, 2026 The biggest challenge on Paraform is that great candidates slip through the cracks. You might find a strong candidate, submit them to a role, and if that hiring manager rejects them, the candidate is lost - even if they'd be perfect elsewhere. Meanwhile, you're already busy finding and engaging new talent. ParaAI Matches changes this. Paraform, Inc. has introduced an advanced AI matching algorithm to the hiring-manager side of the platform, creating a new, passive channel for your past candidates to be discovered and moved to interviews. Turning rejections into new opportunities. When you submit a candidate, you give Paraform, Inc. a rich set of signals: their background, preferences, strengths, compensation expectations, location needs, and more. If the hiring manager you submitted to decides not to move forward, that candidate doesn't just disappear anymore. ParaAI evaluates their profile, experiences, and interests against every open role on the platform. Each day, for every role, ParaAI Matches analyzes: * the job description and role requirements * the intake call transcript * who that hiring manager has interviewed * who they have rejected + reasonings * all candidates in its network From there, it identifies the strongest 5-10 candidates for each role and shows those profiles directly to hiring managers for them to review and express interest. This means your candidate can be surfaced to new companies without you having to resubmit or pitch them again. Your candidate relationships are always protected. Every candidate surfaced through ParaAI has an existing relationship with a Paraform recruiter. When a hiring manager expresses interest, Paraform, Inc. route the request to the right recruiter - you'll be notified via email and on your homepage to confirm interest and action the submission. When multiple recruiters have worked with the same candidate, its system ranks them to determine who gets priority. Key factors include the length of your relationship, your interview rate on submissions for that candidate, whether you've kept their preferences up to date, and your track record of actioning submission requests. Paraform, Inc. has strict safeguards to keep candidate progression tied to their recruiter and to prevent companies from taking processes off-platform. Your candidate data makes matching better. For your candidates to be considered in this new hiring manager matching system, their preference data in the platform needs to be accurate -compensation, location, industry interests, roles, etc. The more accurate these preferences are, the more likely ParaAI will recommend them to the correct hiring teams on the platform. If you haven't already updated preferences for candidates you've recently submitted, this is a great time to start doing it. A passive engine for more placements. Matches gives you a second placement engine. You continue sourcing, building relationships with candidates, and submitting to the roles you're closely working on, while ParaAI quietly works in the background to: * Find other roles your candidates are perfect for * Get them in front of hiring managers * Inform you when a hiring manager wants to interview them If you have questions, Paraform, Inc.'d love to hear them:) Let Paraform, Inc. be your competitive advantage. Join world-class teams using Paraform to fill their most important roles in record time.
Paraform, a hiring marketplace for elite recruiters, has announced securing $20M in Series A funding.
In a sea of AI tools, Paraform bets on people with $20M Series A from Felicis.
Since raising its seed round, Paraform, Inc. has partnered with companies like Palantir, Decagon, Cursor, and Windsurf to build world-class teams.