After strengthening its model and impact over a decade, including participating in accelerator programs by NESsT and ERSTE Social Finance, Jobful expands its support for jobseekers who are overlooked in the Romanian job market with an impact loan from the NESsT Violet Fund.
Founded in 2016 by Mihai Cepoi, Jobful’s mission is to create fair, inclusive pathways to the job market.
The team behind Jobful’s inclusive recruitment services
“From the beginning, we set out to build technology centered around the individual, supporting people in their journey to find meaningful employment,” Mihai shares.
“Without work, people are often excluded not only from the economy, but from society itself ... [For us,] the most meaningful long-term investment in stability is helping someone find the right place to work,” he adds.
In recruitment, the general experience for most people is just to apply and wait. Seeing this, Jobful asked how they could do better, to understand people’s employment needs and support them in their journey from looking for a job all the way to securing an interview and getting hired.
Jobful’s recruitment services, including its stand-alone platform Jobs4All, are designed to help anyone, regardless of background to navigate the job market. Candidates can access support to understand their strengths, clarify their direction, and move confidently from job search to interview and employment.
Working with companies across a wide range of sectors, from Coca Cola HBC and ING Bank to Microsoft and ERSTE Bank, Jobful also offers a recruitment platform that integrates directly into corporate career sites for more transparent, fair hiring processes. Using intelligent matching tools to reduce bias and boost engagement, job seekers can browse meaningful opportunities from vetted employers with strong diversity, equity, and inclusion commitments.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Jobful responded by launching Jobs4Ukr.com in partnership with the local foundation Project Voyager, to support Ukrainian job-seekers arriving in Romania.
“Without work, people are often excluded not only from the economy, but from society itself ... [For us,] the most meaningful long-term investment in stability is helping someone find the right place to work.”
Built following a ‘people-centric’ approach in which individuals’ skills and job expectations are prioritized, the platform rapidly met the urgent needs of displaced professionals. Since its inception, more than 15,000 people have registered with Jobs4Ukr to access verified job opportunities across Romania, Europe, and in remote roles.
This experience reinforced something fundamental to Jobful’s mission: when hiring systems are designed to serve people, not companies, they can adapt to serve those who need it most. What began as a response to a crisis very quickly expanded with the launch of Jobs4All – a platform designed to support all communities in Romania facing barriers to decent work.
“Every time we began working with a new community, refugees, people with disabilities, we discovered needs we hadn’t yet considered. This helped us to adapt our technology to strengthen our support,” Mihai shares.
Romania has one of the highest rates of unemployment among young people aged 15–29 neither in employment, nor education and training (NEET) and people with disabilities in the EU. Other groups that face difficulty in accessing employment opportunities include refugees and migrants, women, and the LGBTQIA+ community.
Jobful’s mission, as MIhai shares, responded to this need:
“We began by supporting Ukrainian refugees. Then we expanded to persons with disabilities. Now we are developing dedicated support for the LGBTQIA+ community, and we will continue to look at any group facing barriers to meaningful work.” So far, Jobful has placed close to 15 people from the LGBTQIA+ community in dignified jobs.
For many social enterprises, funding alone is not enough to grow and sustain their business and its impact. Social entrepreneurs also need non-financial resources like expertise, networks, and tools that many corporates already have at hand.
Jobful team with NESsT acceleration team in Romania
Jobful joined the NESsT Central and Eastern Europe Accelerator program in 2023 and later, in 2025, the first cohort of the Marc Impact Network program by ERSTE Foundation and ERSE Social Finance at pivotal moments in its impact journey.
Through the programs, Mihai and the team behind Jobful accessed tailored mentoring and financing to refine their impact strategy and strengthen their partnerships across the employment ecosystem.
Together with NESsT portfolio manager in Romania, Dumitru Jucov, Mihai defined how Jobful’s technology could be adapted to meet the specific needs of different communities in Romania, especially refugees and migrants.
Jobful was able support close to 700 people from Ukraine to access training and jobs and add over 300 new companies to its digital recruitment platform.
“Jobful’s journey has been transformative. It has evolved from a technology company into a socially-impactful enterprise that supports underserved communities in Romania through reskilling, job placement, and access to dignified employment.”
As the enterprise’s impact grew, the question became how to scale sustainably while continuing to meet the needs of underserved people in Romania and expanding to new groups it did not yet cover – including the LGBTQIA+ community.
This led Jobful to securing a loan from NESsT’s impact fund in Central and Eastern Europe – the Violet Fund – a step which Mihai explains was not simply about accessing capital, but about choosing a partner aligned with both its social mission and vision for long-term growth:
"Joining the Violet Fund allows us to reach new communities in a much more dedicated way [...] In Romania, proposing dedicated programs for the LGBTQIA+ community can be challenging. But our vision is to support all professionals who, in one way or another, face discrimination in finding or keeping a job.”
In October 2025, Mihai Cepoi attended the NESsT portfolio gathering in Warsaw to share his experience supporting inclusive recruitment in Romania
Mihai adds, “For us repayable capital brings constructive pressure. It pushes us to strengthen our model, generate value, and build a sustainable organization that can grow over time”
Unlike short-term grants, NESsT’s investment allows Jobful to expand Jobs4All’s services and launch support tailored to the needs of LGBTQIA+ individuals facing barriers to finding and maintaining jobs. The investment will also support Jobful’s internal hiring practices. Working closely with the Violet Fund team, it will implement measurable diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) targets, appoint a DEI committee to review its progress, and launch inclusive hiring and training programs.
“NESsT’s loan to Jobful gives it the stability to grow its services and better support individuals who face barriers to entering and staying in the workforce, especially the LGBTQIA+ community.
With this investment, Jobful becomes the first company from Romania to join the NESsT Violet Fund, reinforcing the fund’s commitment to companies advancing inclusive employment and building long-term systemic change across Central and Eastern Europe.” shares Filip Wadowski, Violet Fund Director, NESsT.
