Silicon Valley startup Leap.ai wants to use artificial intelligence to match job seekers up with potential employers, and now it has raised a stake to help it realize the vision.

Today the company announced that it has closed a $2.4 million seed funding round that will allow it to expand its platform. The round was led by ZhenFund, a Beijing-based seed fund established in collaboration with Sequoia Capital China, and it also included participation by several unnamed angel investors.

Searching for a job has always been an awful experience, but it has become even more soul-crushing thanks to the outdated tools many human resources departments use to sift through resumes. Most of these programs are little more than glorified text crawlers, which dig through resumes looking for a handful of keywords that line up with the job description. Unfortunately, these systems often toss out dozens of worthwhile resumes simply because they did not word their job titles to match the narrow list of keywords.

Leap.ai hopes to change this system using machine learning, which can sift through thousands of candidates not only to help user find the best jobs for them, but also to aid companies in hiring the right people without accidentally tossing out some of the best candidates.

After registering for an account, Leap.ai users upload their resume and complete a self-assessment, which measures skills, strengths, personality and so on. A machine learning algorithm then looks at this information to recommend job opportunities that best fit the user’s abilities, and it may also share the profile with employers if the user matches the needs of any currently available positions.

According to Richard Liu, Leap.ai’s co-founder and chief executive, the platform does more than simply forward a resume to potential employers. Leap.ai also sends a unique endorsement that explains exactly why that user would be a good fit for the employer.

Job seekers can use Leap.ai’s platform for free, but employers are charged once they make a hire using its system. Leap.ai already has a few major partners using its platform for hiring, including Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc., Cloudera Inc. and Baidu Inc.

Photo: Leap.ai