# Joobs Press Release (April 2026)

> Joobs launches in Belgium: free, permanent job visibility for SMEs powered by AI. The end of the pay-per-post model that existed for the past 25 year.

- **Author:** David Verbustel
- **Category:** DQgDZ94FR765OPY5NiR7
- **Published:** 2026-04-30
- **Language:** en

## Belgian HR-tech startup launches AI platform giving SMEs the same recruitment capabilities as large enterprises, at a fraction of the cost
### Joobs gives SMEs continuous free access to relevant candidates, making recruitment up to 10 times more efficient
ZELLIK (Belgium), 23 April 2026. Joobs, a Belgian HR-tech startup and member of the Start it @KBC ecosystem, is launching a platform that allows SMEs to publish their vacancies across all major channels, manage candidates centrally, and work in full GDPR compliance, all from a single tool. After more than a year of development, this AI-driven platform puts an end to the patchwork of inboxes, spreadsheets, and fragmented job boards that most small businesses rely on today, without the high commissions charged by recruitment agencies.
The traditional hiring process is time-consuming and inefficient. Companies invest significant budgets in job advertisements that can cost between €500 and €3,000 per vacancy. At the same time, listings are often only visible for 30 to 60 days, after which the SME disappears from view again, remaining off the radar of potential candidates for most of the year. This forces companies to repeatedly reinvest in the same profiles, without ever building structural visibility.
 "We built Joobs because the existing model works primarily for large, established, and well-capitalised companies," says David Verbustel, co-founder and CEO of Joobs. "A small company in Liège or Antwerp looking for a coordinator shouldn't have to pay €1,500 per vacancy each time, only to disappear from search results the moment their budget runs out. With Joobs, we ensure vacancies remain permanently visible and are directly indexed by search engines like Google and Bing, so smaller companies can be found just as easily as large players, regardless of their advertising budget."
## Panic hires lead to €8,000 in productivity loss per month
Companies can add information about their organisation and open positions. They then receive an overview of relevant candidates who have been proactively matched to them. Each match is managed via a single central dashboard: follow candidates, compare them, and contact them directly. Everything is fully GDPR-compliant and data-secure, allowing companies to avoid regulatory risk while acting quickly.
When vacancies remain open too long, not only does the workload on the team increase, productivity losses can reach €6,000 to €10,000 per month. "Under that pressure, the focus often shifts from quality to speed, leading to so-called 'panic hires', hires that, according to Leadership IQ research tracking 20,000 new employees, fail in 46% of cases," says David Verbustel. "Yet a bad hire costs on average at least 30% of the annual salary, not counting lost time and resources. SMEs and startups feel the impact of this inefficiency acutely. They are often dependent on expensive, temporary job ads without a structural solution. Moreover, up to half of all jobs are never published, meaning candidates and companies simply never find each other. By proactively matching candidates and keeping companies continuously visible to relevant profiles, we are building a model that starts from quality rather than urgency."
## A new experience for candidates too
On the candidate side, Joobs replaces the traditional job search with a ChatGPT-style career coach: always available, conversational, and built around the candidate's actual situation. In under ten minutes, candidates share their experience, preferences, and what they are looking for. The platform then surfaces both relevant job openings and companies worth approaching. From there, applying to a dozen positions takes a single click, with no cover letters, no duplicate forms. Candidates manage their own data and privacy settings in one place, in plain language and fully in line with GDPR.
## About Joobs
Joobs was founded by four co-founders with experience in IT, recruitment, and entrepreneurship. The startup uses a freemium model and already has more than 15,000 companies in its portfolio. Vacancies are permanently and freely visible on the platform. For organisations that only recruit occasionally, candidate management tools are also free, while growing companies can subscribe from €49/month for additional features.
Joobs is in full growth mode, with around thirty ongoing pilot projects, its first paying customers, and collaborations with several marketing agencies. The recent pre-seed investment and participation in the Start it @KBC programme support further development. From Belgium, the company is working towards a scalable model with international ambitions.
David Verbustel Co-founder & CEO, Joobs, David@joobs.com, +32 492972195, joobs.be

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*Source: [Joobs.be](https://joobs.be/en/blog/joobs-press-release-april-2026)*