Skillit, a New York-based provider of a recruiting platform for full-time construction labor, raised $5.1M in Seed funding.

The round was led by Building Ventures with participation from MetaProp, HOLT Ventures, Great North Ventures, 1Sharpe Ventures and Takeoff Capital.

The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and expand operations building out a team across product development, engineering, customer success and sales.

Led by Fraser Patterson, CEO and Founder, Skillit connects the supply of skilled workers with contractor demand in the $1.6T annual construction industry via a platform for sourcing, skills assessment, hiring, training. The system is already used by ENR contractors including industry leader Messer Construction. It vets workers with proprietary, trade-specific assessments while collecting hundreds of data points to create a taxonomized view of skilled construction labor across the entire employee lifecycle.

"Deskless workers make up 80 percent of the global workforce. In construction they are the foundation of the built world and make the $1.6T in annual construction spending happen. Yet we know almost nothing about them because there have been very few purpose-built solutions that meet the needs of both skilled workers and hiring managers,” Fraser Patterson, Founder & CEO, Skillit, said, "at Skillit, we connect the supply of workers with massive contractor demand and we do it surgically so that builders can hire the right people at the right times.”

Building Ventures Co-founder and General Partner Jesse Devitte said, “Skillit is solving the single greatest challenge facing builders today: the hiring and retention of skilled craft workers.…..We have already witnessed genuine excitement for Skillit from many of our general contractor partners, and we’re excited about the future. With the seed round, Fraser and the Skillit team will open new regional markets, refine the product offering with real customer usage and feedback, and ultimately move the recruitment and retention of skilled labor into the 21st century.”