Female-founded Localyze is expanding to the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK with its global mobility platform that is helping companies attract the best international talent. While the Great Resignation continues to influence the global labour market, alongside ongoing skills shortages hitting companies across Europe, Localyze is making employee relocation and internationalisation easier.
Employee relocation is often considered a lengthy and costly process. Localyze wants to change this conception, guiding companies through global mobility challenges, from relocating new hires to visa changes, postings, and transfers between offices.
Founded in 2018, the Hamburg-based company uses advanced automation and human expertise to make overseas hiring and internationalism easier and more efficient. It helps fast-growing companies tackle skills shortages, grow their teams in ways that make them more diverse, more innovative and more productive, and can help power international expansion and scaling. This is done by both attracting talent to the company’s home country, as well as relocating employees in between international offices.
From offering support with visa applications to work and residence permits, housing registrations and banking in different countries for candidates, the company makes it simple for companies to operate across borders. At the same time, HR departments can monitor each step and ensure compliance.
Since its launch, some of Europe’s fastest-growing companies including Tier Mobility, Forto, Free Now and Personio have used Localyze to grow their teams and relocate 5,000 employees across 90+ countries. According to the company, their platform can save HR teams up to 90% of their time, compared to doing the tasks themselves.
The UK, Ireland and the Netherlands are all home to some of the world’s fastest-growing companies who are scaling quicker than they can find, hire and onboard talent. In the UK for instance, the talent pool of software engineers is limited to around 300,000 people, compared to an extensive international pool of 26.8 million active software developers in the world.
Over in the Netherlands, despite a booming tech ecosystem, finding talented staff is one of the major issues holding back the country’s tech startups. And in Ireland, job vacancies are on the up.
For businesses in these countries considering hiring international talent, Localyze is currently offering a free service that helps them understand how likely it is their candidate will get a visa through access to the platform’s in-house Global Mobility Experts.
Due to Localyze’s global approach, the company is uniquely placed to help British companies not only hire from Europe but to look further afield. Localyze’s own data confirms that emerging markets, specifically India, Brazil, Nigeria, Turkey and Egypt, are hotbeds for talent generally, but are particularly brimming with first-class software engineers, data analysts and developers – three of the most sought-after roles among companies worldwide.
Hanna Amussen, co-founder and CEO at Localyze, said: “We’re delighted to be expanding Localyze to more European countries. The upheaval of the past few years has left founders and CEOs with major talent issues, from Brexit to the global pandemic. But it doesn’t need to be this way, with talented workers across the world interested in working for fast-growing European companies. The key to making this happen, however, is a platform like Localyze that makes it smoother and easier than ever to find the talent that can help your business grow and enable you to relocate the staff to suit growth plans. This is all part of our mission to democratise global mobility and help companies find talent in unexpected places.”
In June 2021, the startup raised over €10.5 million in a funding round led by Europe’s largest dedicated Series A VC fund, Blossom Capital, and has increased revenue 10x over the past year. This has helped Localyze expand into new markets and the company is now on the ground in Germany, UK, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands with plans to launch into North America in the coming year.
