Targeting the pain points of the overseas recruitment market, this "AI headhunter" app has secured investment from media giant Bertelsmann | The Ocea

Introduction:

Looking globally to explore the second growth curve has become a definite direction. However, how to go global still tests the wisdom and courage of every Chinese enterprise. There are numerous paths such as brand going global, supply chain going global, and cross - border e - commerce, but there is never a one - size - fits - all answer. North America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America... The markets are vast, but each has its own challenges. Behind every long - distance expedition is the exploration of Chinese enterprises. More Chinese figures are emerging on every distant coastline.

The "Global Pioneers" column aims to seek out global benchmarks in different fields, analyze real - world cases from a professional perspective, precipitate methodologies through consensus, and discover new possibilities in differences.

Currently, Chinese enterprises going global have fully entered a new stage from "product going global" to "organization going global" - from new energy vehicles to consumer electronics, from large AI models to new materials and semiconductors. More and more Chinese companies are building local teams globally. However, the pain points of long overseas recruitment cycles, high headhunting fees, and high cross - cultural communication costs have not been alleviated in the past year. Instead, they have become more prominent with the intensification of the global talent competition.

Against this background, the AI recruitment platform "HelloBoss" is quietly becoming the talent entry point for many global enterprises and Chinese companies going global.

HelloBoss was first launched in 2023, and in December 2025, it introduced an AI Agent dedicated to the recruitment scenario. With its self - owned patented AI matching algorithm, it automates the recruitment process, thereby improving the two - way communication efficiency and matching success rate between enterprises and job seekers.

From Internet technology to fast - fashion, from industrial intelligence to food and beverage chains, since its launch, the customer base of this "AI headhunter" has been constantly expanding. Currently, the number of online job positions on the platform has exceeded 700,000. Its customers include many global enterprises such as OpenAI, SHEIN, DIOR, LVMH, Hilton, Google, Hisense, Hitachi, Lawson, Suntory, Marriott, and Hoshino. Many leading domestic enterprises in various industries such as Alibaba, Pop Mart, Xiaomi, Kingsoft, iFlytek, Hikvision, Chery, and Yang Guofu have also become the service targets of HelloBoss.

Wang Qin, the founder of NGA, once worked at the internationally renowned HR company Recruit Group for 5 years. He founded the JCCD.com platform for cultural and entertainment illustrators and voice actors to go global and published the book "Atlas of 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 Microsoft Research.

01

Creating a "fast, efficient, and cost - effective" "AI headhunter" in the seller's market of employment

As aging has become a common situation in more and more countries, problems such as insufficient supply of young labor and rising labor costs have become increasingly prominent. Taking neighboring East Asian countries as an example, the 2024 edition of the "White Paper on Labor Economy" released by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan shows that in 2023, the average effective job - offer - to - applicant ratio in Japan was 1.31, which means that for every 1 job seeker, there were 1.3 job openings. The shortage of enterprise manpower is "more serious than before the COVID - 19 pandemic", and the effective job - offer - to - applicant ratio for fresh graduates is even as high as 6 times.

The long - term job market with 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 more than 30,000 headhunting companies in Japan, with about 65,000 practitioners, and the market scale has reached over $10 billion. Moreover, the average fee rate of Japanese headhunters is 35%, the highest level in the world.

Number of headhunting companies in Japan - Data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan

The long recruitment cycle of 2 - 3 months and the low informatization level of recruitment channels are also problems that trouble Japanese HRs. This gave Wang Qin an entrepreneurial opportunity: "If we use a coordinate axis to measure the business prospects of the AI Agent, with the horizontal axis representing the market scale and the vertical axis representing the gap between AI capabilities and the current market technology status, then the human resources market like Japan is a good track. Because the market scale is large enough, and the new - generation AI Agent technology has greater advantages compared with the existing traditional labor - intensive headhunting companies in Japan, which are 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, and cost - effective" "AI headhunter". It 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 job positions, the AI will automatically edit the job information in uploaded files or other URL links into standardized content, automatically generate optimized job information with appropriate wording and local format, and complete the job posting. The AI will also learn the unstructured preference requirements of enterprises for talents, conduct intelligent matching and evaluation of candidates, provide reasons, and offer full - process chat assistance and interview record sharing functions, significantly shortening the recruitment process.

"The traditional subscription system is only responsible for the usage frequency, while the result - based system must be responsible for the delivery quality," Wang Qin said. Different from some recruitment platforms in the market that focus on the matching between job seekers and recruiters, HelloBoss hopes to track the entire recruitment process to obtain the final recruitment result data and optimize the algorithm and matching ability in reverse. Therefore, different from the subscription - based payment model adopted by most similar products, HelloBoss offers a result - based payment service package. Enterprises can pay according to the self - set annual salary ratio fee rate or a fixed amount after successfully recruiting 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 is difficult to make flexible adjustments according to the importance and urgency of different positions. HelloBoss is the first platform in Japan that can directly publish headhunting positions and allows different fee rates to be set for each position. The Agent will also give the most optimized fee rate suggestions, reducing the overall recruitment cost by about 20% and shortening the recruitment cycle by more than half. For employees who leave within 6 months after joining the company, the platform provides a refund mechanism. The Agent will try its best to select the most suitable candidates in the game.

This charging model is generally welcomed by enterprises in Japan. The Japanese recruitment market itself has great potential. The market scale of pre - paid recruitment advertisements alone has reached $10 billion, and the market scale of successful - payment (similar to headhunting) is 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 accounts for 25% of the job - changing population. 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 don't even need to go through the average more than 2 - month signing and job - posting process. The time is shortened to 30 minutes," Wang Qin introduced.

On the side of job seekers, in response to the high - mobility young people's demand for frequent job - hunting, HelloBoss provides resume analysis, matching job recommendations, and natural language dialogue functions, 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 dialogue. The Agent will stand on the user's side, search for highly - matched jobs from more than 500,000 positions according to the user's needs and personal abilities, and help them discover more unexpected opportunities," Wang Qin said.

For the desired jobs, HelloBoss provides customized generation services for Japanese standard 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 1 minute, and they can also submit applications to multiple positions with one click.

"Most current products are still limited to being toC or toB automation tools, but HelloBoss has established a closed - loop from the C - end to the B - end. The Agent independently completes the entire recruitment chain delivery. It is the world's first platform - type product that has fully automated the 'AI headhunter', covers Web + iOS + Android clients, and supports result - based payment," Wang Qin said. This is mainly due to the rapid development of generative large models in recent years, which is at least 3 years ahead of Japanese peers, and relevant patents have been applied for.

02

With a 10 - fold revenue increase in two years of operation, aiming to reshape the global headhunting industry

Wang Qin revealed that HelloBoss achieved commercialization in its first year of operation, and its revenue in 2024 increased 10 times year - on - year. "According to the revenue of the newly launched payment package, it can achieve profitability as early as 2026." In the future, HelloBoss will also launch more functions such as real - time interview guidance and review.

At the beginning of this year, HelloBoss announced the completion of Series A financing, invested by Bertelsmann Group through BAI Capital. The funds will be mainly used for the R & D of technologies such as AI Agent and front - end and back - end products, global market expansion, and the recruitment of personnel for multiple positions. Previously, HelloBoss had received 3 rounds of investment from dozens of well - known Japanese angel investors, Yunqi Capital, and the venture capital institution GOLDEN EGG.

NGA plans to use a part of the funds for model training and infrastructure optimization and other technological R & D of HelloBoss; another part for expanding the team scale, recruiting senior headhunters to empower model training with industry knowledge, improving delivery quality, and optimizing product logic.

In Wang Qin's view, in the AI era, competitive headhunters either have rich experience and can lead the AI model forward or are good at embracing change and collaborating efficiently with the model. "Currently, an average human headhunter can only complete 2 business orders per month. We hope that with the assistance of AI headhunters, in 5 years, a human headhunter can command 100 or more AI headhunters. The AI Agent is responsible for 95% of the high - frequency and highly - regular process work, and human headhunters only need to complete 5% of the low - frequency and high - value judgments and negotiations. While job seekers and recruiters can get fast, efficient, and cost - effective services, headhunters can also turn their knowledge into assets and earn higher incomes."

In addition, the HelloBoss team is planning for international expansion. The newly launched official website already includes a world map mode, focusing on regions with a high degree of aging and an unbalanced supply - demand relationship in the job market. "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.

Previously, HelloBoss cooperated with the US HR unicorn company Deel Inc. to launch the "Global Remote Hire" service. Enterprises can hire overseas talents remotely online for a 3 - 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 Chinese companies going global have used this service to quickly build their early overseas teams.

"We hope to create an Airbnb for the recruitment scenario in globalization, enabling people from any country to quickly find suitable jobs in any region. There is no such product in the market yet, but the data processing and analysis capabilities of generative AI models in the current era can completely help us achieve this vision," Wang Qin said.

*The views expressed are from the interviewed institutions or individuals and are for reference only.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Comprehensive Service Port for Zhejiang Enterprises Going Global", author: Zhejiang Enterprises Going Global.