Alejandro Betancourt Lopez Makes Early Investment in Successful Staffing Agency

Based in Spain and currently in its 12th year of operation, JobandTalent had an excellent year in 2021. The Spanish temporary staffing agency obtained $120 million dollars in funding and plans to expand its operations in the United States.

The lead organization to contribute to this round of Series D funding was Vision Fund 2 from SoftBank. JobandTalent typically has no problem attracting investors, having secured a total of $370 million dollars in financing since its launch in 2009. Alejandro Betancourt Lopez was one of the agency’s earliest investors.

JobandTalent is a Different Type of Temp Agency

The agency that Betancourt Lopez originally funded acts as a dual-sided online platform to connect businesses to people looking for short-term work in the casual labor sector. Companies operating in the logistics and transport industries are some of JobandTalent’s biggest clients.

As the demand for skilled temporary labor continues to grow, JobandTalent intends to use its recent financing round to enable it to expand and keep up with demand. With more work processes going digital, more companies prefer to have temporary workers complete the tasks from home. To date, more than 80,000 people have registered to secure short-term gigs through the JobandTalent platform. The temporary staffing agency currently operates in the following countries:

  • Columbia
  • France
  • Germany
  • Mexico
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom

Besides providing temporary labor for its clients, JobandTalent operates a program for more than 750 large companies to help these businesses manage their staff. The online auction site eBay is one of the largest and most well-known businesses to use this service. JobandTalent’s main competitors are traditional temporary employment agencies such as Randstad and Adecco.

Factors Behind the Growing Demand for Gig Employment

Whether people refer to the work as a temporary assignment, gig, or freelance opportunity, the fact remains that the demand for this type of work is growing at an exceptional rate. Juan Urdiales, a co-founder of JobandTalent, recently stated that the number of people who signed up for the company’s platform doubles each year. The company’s gross revenue hit $570 million dollars in United States currency during 2020.

Urdiales points to the coronavirus pandemic as a major factor behind the growth in temporary employment. The need to improvise with little notice has accelerated the transformation of multiple industries. He predicts that a significant chunk of business will no longer take place in brick-and-mortar facilities but online instead. JobandTalent staff continues to work hard to improve the digital experience for employers and workers alike.

One of the most important ways that JobandTalent stands out from the competition is the protection it offers for workers. Urdiales states that his company has found the delicate balance between a worker’s right to self-agency versus a company’s desire to manage its temporary workforce more tightly. He commented that many clients refer to workers as self-employed even though they desire to have greater control over their work processes.

The tension between platform control and workers’ rights has caused several workers to file lawsuits in Europe. Workers have also started demanding benefits as they continue to work via the platform and successfully complete multiple temporary assignments. JobandTalent now offers benefits such as health insurance, job training, and payroll advances in some countries. The company has also been proactive in helping people line up their next gig before their current one ends.

JobandTalent Will Remain a Private Company for Now

While speaking to a local reporter for a Spanish newspaper recently, Juan Urdiales explained that he intends to keep JobandTalent a private company by courting investors like Alejandro Lopez Betancourt. This approach has seen the company through several business strategy transitions over the years.

When JobandTalent launched in 2009, its investors and leadership team knew that it had to take a novel approach to employee recruitment. The company was one of the earliest to use technology to recruit and onboard new workers. One strategy that proved especially beneficial was using a linguistics algorithm to create job ads that caught the attention of people who had not actively started their job search yet.

Five years ago, JobandTalent moved away from enterprise recruitment towards finding subject matter experts (SME) for its clients. The shift matched a growing momentum for gig work brought about people’s increased comfort with using smartphone applications to find employment. The company’s most recent change in focus was assisting large clients with managing their temporary workforce.

Alejandro Lopez Betancourt Talks About Taking Risks

Investing in a start-up temporary employment agency back in 2009 was a risk for Alejandro Lopez Betancourt, despite the fact he was already a seasoned investor at that time. However, he has always motivated himself with the expression “Nothing risked, nothing gained.”

What this expression means to Betancourt Lopez is that he understands risks are necessary to achieve success. At the same time, he knows that he cannot just take a risk without understanding the potential consequences. According to Lopez Betancourt, the ability to live with the consequences of a decision when it did not go as planned is the mark of a mature business professional.

Besides his work as an angel investor, Alejandro Betancourt Lopez actively operates several businesses. Examples of the most well-known of his companies include Hawkers Sunglasses and Auro Travel. The leadership of each company has Betancourt Lopez to thank for turning around a struggling business. While both Hawkers Sunglasses and Auro Travel offered an attractive product or service, both lacked managerial direction and capital input before Betancourt Lopez came onboard.