David Travers
Analyst · Evercore
Thank you, Ian, and good afternoon, everyone. While 2021 was a unique period in the labor markets, it's our continued execution against our 3 strategic pillars that allowed us to deliver such outsized results. I'm excited to share some highlights with you this afternoon. Starting with our first pillar, increasing the number of employers in the ZipRecruiter marketplace. We implemented a variety of strategies during 2021 to drive growth. From new product innovations to increased investments in ROI-driven marketing campaigns, we are committed to attracting and delighting employers. The results are clear to see the numbers. A record number of paid employers participated in our marketplace in 2021. This growth came from employers of all sizes and industries, driven by both new and returning paid employers. Our product strategy of using extremely simple user experiences to deliver cutting-edge underlying technology, continued to pay off in 2021. There is no better way to judge the success of this strategy than to let employers and our marketplace explain it themselves. For example, when you look at G2, employers continue to rate us the #1 employment job site in the U.S. In addition, in Q4, employer feedback led G2 to recognize ZipRecruiter as the hiring solution, users are most likely to recommend. Since this is our first call going over full-year financial results, we want to provide you with additional color on employer cohort behavior that demonstrates how our marketplace is growing stronger over time. While the 2021 cohort contributed to a record number of paid employers in 2021, average monthly revenue per employer from that cohort was 15% higher than the 2020 cohort during its first year. Additionally, revenue contribution across all annual cohorts was exceptional, with each annual cohort showing increasing average monthly revenue in 2021. These cohort results were consistent with our focus on deepening relationships with employers over time. The more employers get to know the power of the ZipRecruiter marketplace, the more confidence they have that they can pay more to get more with ZipRecruiter. Our employer marketing efforts put our product and its competitive advantages in the spotlight for employers. This investment, coupled with positive word of mouth from the companies using ZipRecruiter for recruiting, has generated over 80% aided brand awareness as of January 2022. This extraordinary level of awareness is a long-term asset that makes all of our employer acquisition and retention initiatives more efficient. Our long-term philosophy, when it comes to marketing, is consistent. We are scientists, not artists. We invest, measure results quickly and then adjust spend in each marketing campaign according to their ROI. Disciplined employer acquisition and favorable revenue profiles have resulted in attractive cohort economics over the years. Our 2021 cohort of paid employers, in particular, had an excellent ROI, highlighting the financial efficiency of our marketing strategy. Now, I'll shift to our second pillar, increasing the number of job seekers. Despite one of the tightest labor markets in history, we have 35 million active job seekers in our marketplace in 2021, compared to 36 million in 2020. Our ability to attract and engage job seekers at scale, despite their historic scarcity, was the result of a relentless effort to continue improving our job seeker experience. Job seekers have rewarded our efforts with a #1 rating for our job seeker apps in both the Apple and Google app stores. As part of our effort to humanize the job seeker experience of ZipRecruiter, we vastly expanded the prominence of Phil, our AI-powered personal recruiter. Phil now introduces himself to the job seeker during the onboarding process in both our mobile apps and [AM] on the web. As the job seekers' personal recruiter, Phil engages at key moments to capture job seekers' specific preferences, so that he can improve his recommendations over time. Armed with this insight, Phil directed job seekers' attention to great-matched job opportunities, tens of millions of times, in 2021. In 2021, we began making significant marketing investments in building our brand with job seekers. Much of this investment in 2021 centered around developing and launching job seeker-focused TV spots, highlighting the experience as job seekers have told us about, namely that working with Phil was the first time they ever felt like someone was truly on their side to help them through the job search process. We love hearing these stories of job seekers' positive experiences and intend to share more of these for many years to come. Lastly, I will discuss our third pillar, making our matching technology smarter over time. As Ian noted earlier, employers have never been more eager to fill their open jobs. In response to the market-wide shortage of people looking for work, we worked harder than ever to deliver more great matches. Data from our growing marketplace powers our matching algorithms, which continuously learn and deliver better results. This allows us to drive great match opportunities to job seekers across our marketplace, using products like ‘Invite to Apply’. Employers tell us our algorithms are working by rating applications as a thumbs up. We were able to deliver 55% more total thumbs up great match candidates in 2021 versus 2020, despite a historically-tight labor market. We're proud of these results we delivered and the team's execution across these pillars. As we look ahead, you'll hear more about scaling both the number of employers and job seekers in our marketplace, drives more data that feeds our matching algorithms, enabling us to accelerate the rate of change in how people find work. Now, I'll turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Tim Yarbrough, to talk through the fourth quarter results as well as guidance for the first quarter and full year for 2022. Tim?