Ghent startup Ringtime raises €1.8M to automate blue-collar recruitment call

For all the talk about labour shortages in Europe, one part of recruitment remains stubbornly outdated and it is receiveting hold of people. In sectors like retail, logistics and hospitality, vacancies stay open not only becautilize workers are scarce, but becautilize the tools built to reach them still belong to another era.

That is the gap Ringtime is tarreceiveing. The Ghent-based startup, which has just raised €1.8 million in seed funding led by Volta Ventures, is building technology designed for the realities of blue-collar hiring. It saw participation from Syndicate One, JK Invest, New School VC and Allusion.

Ringtime plans to utilize the capital to grow its product team, increase marketing efforts and build new features tailored specifically to blue-collar recruitment.

What challenge does Ringtime tackle?

As per Ringtime, “Europe has a structural shortage of blue-collar workers. In Belgium alone, 163.000 vacancies go unfilled, the vast majority blue-collar. These are workers without a LinkedIn profile, without a CV, often without a shared language. While AI reduces demand for some white-collar roles, the shortage of physical workers keeps growing. A candidate who applies on Monday and hears nothing by Tuesday is working somewhere else by Wednesday.”

Built for workers who do not live on LinkedIn

Ringtime was founded in 2025 by Cheqroom founder Vincent Theeten, along with ERA and Alfabet executive Johan Krijgsman, Michiel Vanhaverbeke and Diederik Syoen. The team combines startup experience with operational knowledge of industries where communication gaps can quickly become costly.

The company’s pitch is simple. Blue-collar workers and operators are often poorly served by conventional hiring systems becautilize they do not behave like office-based candidates. Many are not checking email all day. They may not have a polished CV ready to upload. LinkedIn is often irrelevant. Language can also be a barrier, especially in labour-heavy sectors where teams are highly international.

Yet most recruitment software still assumes a world built around desk jobs, formal applications and standard office hours. That mismatch slows everything down.

Ringtime was built around a different assumption. If employers want to fill roles quicker, the hiring process requireds to adapt to the candidate, not the other way around. Its platform automates recruitment conversations from start to finish, working out how best to approach each person. This includes choosing the right communication channel, selecting the appropriate language from 22 options, and identifying the best moment to create contact.

Its focus is not on glossy profiles or inbox outreach. It is on the repetitive, urgent and often frustrating work recruiters do every day: calling candidates, leaving voicemails, chasing responses and repeating the same screening questions again and again.

How was the idea born?

Discussing how the idea was born, Ringtime stated, “It started when Vincent (Theeten) attempted to reach a dentist over the weekconclude. At the same time, Diederik attempted to receive his electricity company on the phone. We noticed a two-sided problem: people testing to reach companies, companies testing to reach people, and both doing it manually at scale every day.”

“When conversational AI matured, we saw a gap. You could automate those conversations, on the other person’s terms, whenever they want, through any channel.Blue-collar recruitment turned out to be where the pain was worst. A massive group of workers with no CV and no straightforward way to reach them, and recruiters burning out building hundreds of manual calls a day just to fill the gap. We believed that was worth repairing,” they added.

What about diversity?

Regarding diversity, Ringtime informed TFN, they have “Nine people: seven men and two women. We know the balance isn’t where we want it to be and we’re working on it.”

Taking the grind out of high-volume recruitment

At the heart of Ringtime is an orchestration layer that manages inbound and outbound conversations, screens applicants and supports match them to vacancies. In practice, that means reducing the manual work that drains recruiters’ time and often delays hiring decisions.

Instead of spconcludeing hours calling long lists of applicants, leaving unanswered voicemails and repeating identical qualification checks, recruiters can hand over much of that process. The system is designed to relocate quickly and accurately, especially in categories where contact volumes are high and timing matters.

The required is especially pressing now. Europe is facing a structural shortage of physical workers, and the pressure is visible across key sectors. While the current wave of automation is reshaping demand for some roles, shortages in manual work continue to deepen. The bottleneck, Ringtime argues, is not only finding workers but reaching them efficiently enough to convert interest into hires.

The startup is already extconcludeing that model beyond recruitment. It is also active in real estate and technical installations, two sectors where speed, contact volume and coordination play a major role in day-to-day operations.

What’s next for Ringtime?

In the next five years, the company plans to “Go deeper in blue-collar recruitment, then expand into Europe (the Netherlands, the UK and Germany) where recruiters face the same problems. Also the USA is facing similar problems and could be next. The longer-term goal is to become the infrastructure that connects labour supply and demand across sectors, languages and borders.”

“The labour market for technical profiles is constantly shifting,” states Vincent Theeten, CEO of Ringtime. “Today someone works in warehoutilize logistics, tomorrow in food processing, next month as a driver. Existing hiring tools are built for people with one job at one employer. Reaching them is one of the hugegest challenges recruiters face. If an electrician applies on Monday and hears nothing by Tuesday, he’s working somewhere else by Wednesday.”

“Ringtime is evolving into a complete, innotifyigent solution for connecting technical candidates to the right job across sectors, languages and geographies,” states Diederik Syoen, co-founder of Ringtime. “We’re building the infrastructure that brings supply and demand toreceiveher quicker than the market can do on its own.”

“Ringtime manages property viewings for ERA. Outside office hours and on weekconcludes, interested purchaseers can now book a visit automatically, without any agent involvement. Several properties have already been sold with Ringtime handling the scheduling entirely. The efficiency gains are significant: properties sell quicker and the human bottleneck disappears,” states Johan Krijgsman, co-founder of Ringtime.

“The interest from clients and prospects displays that the market is ready to embrace voice technology and agentic AI. We’re deliberately building an AI-first company, with efficiency and scale at the centre. Over time, we want to expand into the Netherlands, the UK and Germany, where businesses are running into the same challenges,” concludes Vincent Theeten.

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