When ecosystems collide: How RecruitmentTech is catching up with Edtech

This month both Udacity and 2U made efforts to increase their career offering. Udacity have partnered with glide.ai, an AI based recruitment platform which allows white-labelling of their product. This platform will enable employers and job seekers to match with some AI -assistance to optimise the matching. Meanwhile 2U have partnered with Linkedin to offer 2U students access to Linkedin’s Premium Career service.

Frequently discussed on this blog is the Education value chain and in particular, the argument that since most Education (at least for MOOCs) is career driven then Edtech businesses that can serve the entire goal i.e. from the education to the job itself, such as Bootcamps, will have a stronger value proposition than those only able to offer part of the value chain e.g. a MOOC (with caveats around price and convenience). Both Udacity and 2U have come made efforts to go beyond just offering the educational aspect.

2U’s is the simpler. 2U differs from MOOC platforms in the sense the course provider and the learner have a stronger relationship with each other than with the platform (in effect, the customer is the university and the learner is the user). 2U have recently been building out their value proposition to the learner, including a deal with WeWork and their latest move is to add in LinkedIn’s premium career service. If that can nudge up the employment stats of the degree courses it’ll make their University clients happier as well as their users.

Udacity haven’t just woken up to this proposition either and have been continuously experimenting with careers fares, Udacity Connect etc. Their latest iteration is different because they’ve partnered with a third party, glide.ai to provide the service rather than build it in-house. That’s important because it reflects that RecruitmentTech, which started after Edtech, is now catching up and becoming a key and integrated part of the ecosystem.

The strategic overlap is obvious and a question for players in this space will be around partnership or acquisition, those who remain on their narrow offering without augmenting it will have a weaker value proposition vis a vis those who partner or acquire.