Kariyer.net has 40 million CVs. Its next job is making them count.

Forty million CVs can tell you plenty about a country. They can also leave an employer staring at a screen, wondering whom to call. Kariyer.net has spent more than a quarter of a century building the first part of that equation. Its more interesting business now lies in the second: helping people on both sides of the hiring desk decide what to do next.

The Turkish recruitment company reported more than 40 million CVs and 11 million monthly applications in figures dated December 2025. Those numbers describe a substantial database and a busy marketplace. They do not mean 40 million people are currently looking for work, or that every application ends in an interview. The distance between sending a CV and signing a contract is where much of its newer product portfolio lives.

That portfolio stretches from job advertising and candidate recommendations to assessments, recruiting software and employer branding. It even reaches into the nervous minutes before an interview. For a business whose name means “career,” the ambition has become pleasingly literal: get involved before, during and around the job search.

A small form with a large afterlife

The origin is refreshingly practical. A contemporary account in Hürriyet’s Bigpara traced the idea to Kariyer Danışmanlık, an HR consultancy whose website included a CV form in 1996. People used it. The response helped encourage Tufan Sevinçel to pursue a dedicated online recruitment business, which he founded with Sungur Ilgaz. Kariyer.net went live in June 1999.

By June 2002, the company said its database had passed 500,000 CVs and its membership included more than 900 firms. Its original mission was to bring employers and job seekers together online. The service offered something recognizable to both: a place to leave professional credentials and a place to look through them without handling a mountain of paper.

Kariyer.net became part of iLab, the Turkish internet group whose other brands include comparison, property and automotive businesses. That affiliation places it within a family of companies built around consequential searches. Finding an employee has different stakes from finding a car, but both reward a platform that can organize a crowded field into useful choices.

The job board needed another job

Familiarity did not make the business immune to pressure. Harvard Business School’s public synopsis of Kariyer.net: Recruiting AI describes stalled growth, economic turbulence and rising international competition when Fatih Uysal became CEO in 2017. The response was to broaden the company beyond its online job board, using AI in internal operations and commercial products.

The financial ambition was specific. By 2023, management wanted to double revenue over three years and lift the contribution from outside job advertising from 30 percent to 50 percent. Those were targets. They should be read as evidence of where management wanted to go, rather than a report of what it subsequently achieved.

The strategic logic is easy to follow. An employer that pays to attract applicants still needs to sort them, assess them, arrange interviews and keep colleagues informed. Each task offers another reason to use the supplier. For Kariyer.net, moving into those tasks also creates ways to earn money beyond selling the next vacancy announcement.

Who pays, and what they buy

The basic arrangement is straightforward: job seekers can search, build profiles and apply without paying for those core services. Employers buy access to recruiting opportunities and tools. The platform’s current listings span industries and seniority levels; its homepage, for example, features Zorlu Holding among employers actively recruiting. A student seeking an internship and an experienced finance specialist can use the same front door.

Public first-time-customer offers, checked in September 2026, put a number on the employer’s entry point. Avantajlı İlan is displayed at ₺2,099 for a ten-day advertisement. The thirty-day options include Garantili Tek İlan at ₺4,099, Akıllı İlan at ₺5,699 and Süper İlan at ₺6,799. These are advertised package prices, not a universal quote for every company or recruiting project.

The ladder moves from publication toward assistance. Akıllı İlan adds AI-supported candidate recommendations; Süper İlan includes automated selection of supporting products. The commercial proposition is that an employer may pay more to reduce the effort of getting relevant responses. Whether that is worth doing depends on the vacancy, the audience and the problem the recruiter actually has.

After “apply,” the work begins

Kariyer.net’s employer offering includes shortlists, candidate filtering and recorded interviews through its recruitment workspace. Its Pratik Aday Servisi goes further: sourcing, preliminary conversations and interviews can be handled for the employer. That is a service business alongside the software and advertising business, aimed at companies that need people to do the recruiting work.

PeopleBox addresses the administrative middle. Kariyer.net invested in the applicant tracking company in 2022. Its tools include candidate records, interview notes, video interviewing and reporting. The appeal is less glamorous than an AI demonstration, but easy to understand: a hiring team needs to know who has spoken to whom, what was said and which decision is still waiting.

Coensio addresses assessment. Kariyer.net invested in 2021 and held 52 percent when plans to acquire the remaining shares were reported in January 2024. Its pre-assessment product helps employers evaluate applicants, especially for technology roles. Together, the investments show a company extending into the steps that turn an interested applicant into someone an employer can meaningfully evaluate.

A driver, a developer and a university applicant

One job-search experience does not fit every worker. Kariyer.net’s own help pages distinguish its more professional, white-collar audience from İşin Olsun’s blue-collar focus. Launched in 2017, İşin Olsun serves hiring needs such as cooks, drivers and tradespeople. Location-based discovery makes particular sense when the practical question is whether a shift is close enough to home.

Techcareer.net, established in 2021, tackles another need: developing technology talent. Its current positioning emphasizes AI skills, with practical training for individuals and organizations. The website advertises courses involving AI-assisted application development and building assistants with tools such as Claude and n8n. Training gives the group a relationship with people who are building capabilities, as well as those already seeking their next role.

Then there is the university guide. Kariyer.net offers school and department comparisons, exam-related tools and an employer-preference index derived from activity on its platform. For a student deciding what to study, that offers a view of hiring demand alongside the usual admissions questions. It is a view through Kariyer.net’s own window, however, rather than a complete census of graduate opportunity.

The answer you remember on the way home

Its interview rehearsal tool addresses a painfully ordinary experience: the good answer arriving after the meeting has ended. In research released on August 31, 2026, involving more than 6,500 candidates, the company reported that 60 percent left interviews wishing they had done something differently. By then, it said more than 6,000 candidates had used its rehearsal feature.

Mülakat Provası lets users supply a role and job description, respond to tailored questions by voice or video, and receive AI feedback. It is advertised as free. The product FAQ says recordings and results are private to the candidate and are not shared with employers. That distinction matters: practice is easier to attempt when the rehearsal does not become another audition.

“Every step that strengthens a candidate’s preparation benefits both the candidate and the employer.”

Fatih Uysal · August 2026
Translated from Turkish

The sensible use is preparation: practise explaining an example, notice where an answer wanders and try again. Feedback from a tool does not determine how an individual interviewer will respond. But a rehearsal can give an applicant something concrete to work on instead of another evening spent worrying about an imaginary question.

Local depth has consequences

Kariyer.net competes for employer attention with LinkedIn, Turkish job sites such as Yenibiriş and Secretcv, and companies’ own hiring channels. Its distinctive pitch is the combination of a domestic candidate database, specialized audiences and recruiting services. Research relationships add another layer: it participates in global talent studies with The Network, The Stepstone Group and Boston Consulting Group.

Reach also invites scrutiny. In June 2025, Turkey’s Competition Board opened an investigation into allegations involving Kariyer.net’s data combination with İşin Olsun, pricing behavior and advertising expenditure. The announcement described suspected abuse of dominance. An investigation is not a finding of a violation, but it puts the commercial benefits of operating related platforms under examination.

Inside the company, its employer profile describes roughly 500 staff, benefits and employee events. Its creation of ventures such as WeBrand and Techcareer.net provides a more concrete clue to how it works: new business lines have been developed internally as well as through investments. Culture claims are easy to print. Product decisions show where the organization has committed effort.

Copy the next useful task

The lesson worth borrowing is to follow the customer’s unfinished work. A job ad creates applications; applications create a sorting problem; a shortlist creates an interview problem. Kariyer.net has built or backed products along that path. A smaller business could apply the same reasoning by identifying one recurring task customers still handle awkwardly after using its main service.

That approach needs discipline. More distribution cannot make an unattractive job offer compelling. More filtering cannot produce skills absent from the candidate pool. And a school ranking based on platform activity cannot tell a student everything about a degree. The useful test for each addition is whether it improves a decision. Forty million CVs make a striking headline. Helping someone make the next call gives them a purpose.