XING AG buys eqipia – the leading technology for intelligent employee referrals in Switzerland

• The purchase price is set at CHF 3.2m and can be increased by up to CHF 4.8m.
• XING CEO Vollmoeller: “XING asserts its position as the leader in innovative recruiting solutions with this acquisition.”

Hamburg/Zurich, 14 April 2016 – XING AG (O1BC/ISINDE000XNG888) has acquired the Zurich company BuddyBroker AG and its product eqipia effective immediately. eqipia is the leading intelligent and automated employee referral programme in Switzerland. The purchase price is set at CHF 3.2m. An earn-out payment of up to CHF 4.8m may also take effect if the operative goals are reached. BuddyBroker AG has seven employees who will all continue working for the company. Both founders, Flurin Müller (30) and Patrick Mollet (39), will stay on board to drive the product's further development. Companies like Migros, Swisscom, SBB, Zühlke, BKW (Bernische Kraftwerke) and EMC have already begun using eqipia successfully. Employee referrals are on the rise in HR. In the USA, around 40 percent of all new hires can be attributed to referrals from employees. Employee referrals are already the most effective recruiting tool in the German-speaking world today. Most companies have implemented a bonus programme in order to make use of employee referrals. This, however, is a manual process that is inefficient and time-consuming for both HR and employees. The “eqipia ReferralManager” digitalises and automates this complex process. It analyses employees' networks, which it can access via their XING profiles, and identifies suitable colleagues using a matching algorithm. These potential candidates can then be contacted automatically via the tool, significantly reducing the workload in HR. The employees concerned receive all the important information about the vacancy and can pass this on to their contacts. HR departments then receive transparent reports about the success of the recruiting tool. They also have the option of awarding a bonus for the successful referral of a contact. XING CEO Vollmoeller: “XING emphasizes its position as the leader for innovative recruiting solutions with this acquisition.” XING CEO Thomas Vollmoeller: “An automated solution for employee referrals is the superior recruitment tool. The advantage for companies: They can find better qualified candidates at much lower costs and much more quickly than with traditional methods. Their own employees serve as ambassadors for the company and the process of approaching candidates is personal, reliable and purposeful. As a result, the proportion of employees recruited on the basis of referrals is very high. eqipia is an outstanding product in this area. It offers typical Swiss precision and fits perfectly with XING. The acquisition of eqipia asserts XING’s position as a leader in innovative recruitment solutions.” Founders Flurin Müller and Patrick Mollet are looking forward to the integration with XING: “With XING we can implement our product visions even faster and achieve even better results for our customers. XING’s established distribution network enables us to offer eqipia in the German speaking region in one fell swoop.” The eqipia ReferralManager is available immediately as a part of XING’s e-recruiting range at recruiting.xing.com/eqipia. For the launch, XING is offering a special on the eqipia ReferralManager. XING is also developing a solution that is completely integrated into the XING platform. This will be presented at the “HRM Expo” (Zukunft Personal) in Cologne. About XING The leading online business network in German-speaking countries supports its members in mastering the transformations taking place in the world of work. XING helps its more than 10 million members to balance their professional and private life as well as possible within an environment defined by a lack of skilled workers, digitalisation and changing values. To this end, members can visit XING Jobs to look for vacancies that appeal to them, stay up-to-date with news offers by XING, or browse the German-language portal XING spielraum to find out about the trends and changes taking place in the new world of work. At the start of 2015, XING added Jobbörse.com, the largest jobs search engine in German-speaking countries, to its portfolio. Before that, XING had acquired kununu, which as the principal employer review platform in German-speaking countries served to strengthen XING’s leading position within the field of social recruiting. XING was founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003, has been publicly listed since 2006, and listed on the TecDAX since September 2011. Members can meet and exchange views in over 70,000 groups, while also getting together at more than 150,000 business-related events every year. More than 10.5 million people use the XING platforms in the core German-speaking market, and over 10 million of them are XING members. XING has almost 800 employees at offices in Hamburg, Munich, Aschaffenburg, Barcelona and Vienna. Visit www.xing.com for more information.