ZipRecruiter Q2 2026 Earnings Report

ZipRecruiter EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $0.53
• Consensus EPS: -$0.06
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.59
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

ZipRecruiter Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $118.06 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

ZipRecruiter Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q2 2026
• Date: 8/5/2026
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, August 5, 2026
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

ZipRecruiter (NYSE:ZIP) operates an online employment marketplace that connects job seekers and employers. Its platform provides various solutions, such as job posting, online interviews, job alerts, match scores, and application updates. The company was incorporated in 2010 and is based in Santa Monica, California.

ZipRecruiter Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Q2 revenue rose 5% year over year to $118.1 million, exceeding the midpoint of guidance, while adjusted EBITDA increased to $14.6 million, or a 12% margin versus 8% a year earlier.
• Positive Sentiment: Product improvements drove marketplace engagement, including a 34% sequential increase in qualified applications and a doubling of employer response rates per application year over year. Smart Outreach, audio messages in Be Seen First, and expanded ChatGPT and Claude integrations are intended to further increase employer-job seeker conversations.
• Positive Sentiment: Enterprise performance marketing revenue grew 15% year over year, supported by programmatic bidding tools whose adoption increased more than 50% and which produced a twofold improvement in the rate of meeting customer campaign targets.
• Positive Sentiment: Management raised its outlook from flat revenue growth to likely low-single-digit year-over-year growth for full-year 2026, targeting a 12%–14% adjusted EBITDA margin versus 9% in 2025. Q3 guidance calls for $121 million of revenue and $16 million of adjusted EBITDA.
• Neutral Sentiment: The company said the labor market remains subdued, with hiring and quits near 15-year lows, and attributed Q2 momentum primarily to product execution rather than macroeconomic improvement. Revenue per paid employer declined 1% year over year as a surge in new customers joined partway through the quarter.

Presentation

[Operator]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the ZipRecruiter, Inc. second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Emilio Sartori, Head of Investor Relations. Emilio, please go ahead.

[Emilio Sartori, Head of Investor Relations at ZipRecruiter]

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us on our earnings conference call, during which we will discuss ZipRecruiter's performance for the second quarter and the June 30th, 2026, and our guidance for the third quarter of 2026. Joining me on the call today are Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO, and David Travers, President and Interim CFO. Before we begin, please be reminded that forward-looking statements made today are subject to risks and uncertainties relating to future events and/or the future financial performance of ZipRecruiter. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. A discussion of some of the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any forward-looking statements can be found in ZipRecruiter's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30th, 2026, which is available on our investor website and the SEC's website.

[Emilio Sartori, Head of Investor Relations at ZipRecruiter]

The forward-looking statements in this conference call are based on the current expectations as of today, and ZipRecruiter assumes no obligations to update or revise them, whether as a result of new developments or otherwise. In addition, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, not as a substitute for or in isolation from, GAAP results. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP metrics to the nearest GAAP metrics are included in ZipRecruiter's shareholder letter and in our Form 10-Q. Now I will turn the call over to Ian.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Thank you. Good afternoon to everyone joining us today. ZipRecruiter's momentum accelerated in the second quarter. We grew revenue by 5% year-over-year to $118.1 million, coming in $6 million above the midpoint of our guidance range. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $14.6 million, representing a 12% margin, which was above the midpoint of our guidance range and above the Adjusted EBITDA margin of 8% in Q2 of 2025. Additionally, we repurchased $294.6 million of our 5% senior unsecured notes at a $65 million discount to par. That transaction meaningfully reduced our debt burden while leaving our balance sheet strong. We closed the quarter with $174 million in cash and investments, giving us ample capital to fully fund our future growth initiatives.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Turning to our product momentum, our marketplace continued to improve in Q2, with each innovation focused on the same goal: driving more conversations between employers and job seekers. We believe this real-world, outcomes-based focus is what has been driving our growth. First, the ongoing rollout of our next-generation search and matching engine to all parts of the ZipRecruiter platform increased qualified application volume in Q2 by 34% quarter-over-quarter. This lift in qualified applications, paired with our other product improvements, doubled the employer response rate per application year-over-year. Second, we rolled out an option for candidates applying through our Be Seen First feature to record an audio message to accompany their resume, giving job seekers a powerful new way to highlight their personality and stand out. Early data shows that job seekers who record a message saw an 8% lift in response rates from the employer.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Third, we launched a new AI feature called Smart Outreach, which enables employers to instantly turn job descriptions into customized, multi-step message campaigns sent directly to candidates across our resume database. Smart Outreach automates that initial touchpoint to make hiring faster, easier, and more personal. The volume of conversations happening on ZipRecruiter is accelerating as we use cutting-edge technology to help the right people find one another, connect faster, and achieve better outcomes. Each new interaction enriches our proprietary dataset, making our technology more effective and creating a compounding advantage that improves the experience across both sides of our marketplace. Finally, before I turn the call over to Dave, I want to touch on a major addition to our leadership team. We recently announced that Carmen Chan will be joining us as our new Chief Financial Officer, effective August 17th.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Carmen brings a wealth of experience from Barclays, Noom, and Goldman Sachs. She will be instrumental in driving our long-term financial strategy and operational excellence. Once Carmen assumes the role, Dave will be continuing in his role as president. We are absolutely thrilled to welcome her to the team. With that, I'll turn the call over to Dave to share some additional business highlights, financial results, and guidance.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Thanks, Ian, good afternoon. Our marketplace gained momentum in the second quarter as the product improvements we've made over the past several quarters continue to compound. At our core, we are making it easier for employers and job seekers to find one another and start meaningful conversations. I'm excited to share several highlights with you today. We launched our next-generation search and matching engine in Q1, which drove a 37% increase in qualified application volume. The ongoing rollout of our next-generation search and matching engine to all parts of the ZipRecruiter platform increased qualified application volume in Q2 by 34% quarter-over-quarter. This lift in qualified applications, paired with our other product improvements, doubled the employer response rate per application year-over-year. We believe increasing the quantity of qualified applications will lead to more meaningful connections between employers and job seekers.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

In Q2, we expanded our Be Seen First feature. We gave applicants the option to record a message to employers, letting them showcase their personality and soft skills alongside their qualifications. Early data shows that job seekers who recorded a message saw an 8% lift in connection rates with the employer. We also launched Smart Outreach, a new AI-driven feature for our resume database that helps hiring teams quickly find and connect with job seekers. We know from our data that over 80% of candidates are more interested in a role when an employer reaches out proactively. To capitalize on this, Smart Outreach uses AI to turn job descriptions into personalized, editable message campaigns. With a single click, hiring teams can tap into our pool of over 50 million job seekers, minimizing the hours traditionally spent chasing replies and replacing administrative bottlenecks with active conversations.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Our enterprise strategy continues to show strong momentum as our investments in programmatic bidding tools deliver tangible growth. Just like last quarter, adoption of our automated campaign performance solutions grew over 50% year-over-year as large employers look for more efficient hiring solutions. Furthermore, these optimizations to our bidding algorithms also drove a 2X year-over-year improvement in our rate of meeting customers' campaign targets. We believe this increased efficacy, as well as other improvements, drove a 15% year-over-year increase in performance marketing revenue in Q2, proving that our technology investments are delivering for employers of every size. We continue to lean into conversational AI platforms to meet job seekers where they are. Following our Q1 launch of the ZipRecruiter app for ChatGPT, we've now deepened that integration so job seekers can search for roles from ZipRecruiter directly within the ChatGPT chat field.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Additionally, in Q2, we launched a new connector for Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant. As job seekers increasingly turn to these AI tools earlier in their search, we view these expansions as a critical step in broadening our distribution footprint and will look to expand our integrations over time. We believe that this is also a testament to our brand strength and quality of jobs in our marketplace. With that, I'll now discuss our financial results and guidance. Our second quarter revenue of $118.1 million represents a 5% increase year-over-year and a 10% increase quarter-over-quarter. These increases were driven primarily by a higher number of paid employers and increased job posting activity, alongside the successful rollout of key product improvements. We ended the second quarter with over 70,000 quarterly paid employers, representing a 7% increase year-over-year and a 12% increase sequentially.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

We saw strong growth in both new and returning customers as our product improvements continue to resonate with employers of all sizes. Revenue per paid employer was $1,669, down 1% year-over-year and down 2% sequentially. These decreases are primarily a function of the strong growth in quarterly paid employers. Because many of these new employers joined partway through the quarter, they only contributed revenue for a portion of Q2, which drove down the average. Looking at operating expenses, we continue to gain operating leverage across the business as we scale revenue. Total operating expenses decreased to $101.3 million versus $106.9 million in the prior year period, primarily due to lower stock-based compensation and personnel-related expenses. Turning to profitability, net income in the second quarter was $43.4 million, representing a 37% net income margin.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

On a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis, net income increased due to the gain on debt extinguishment from the June 2026 partial repurchase of our 5% unsecured notes due in 2030. Adjusted EBITDA was $14.6 million, equating to a 12% margin. This compares favorably to an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 8% in Q2 of last year and 9% in Q1 of this year. Increases in Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin both on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis are a result of both higher revenue and our continued cost discipline. In June, we repurchased $294.6 million of our 5% senior unsecured notes at a discounted par value of $229.4 million. This allowed us to retire over half our outstanding notes and meaningfully reduce our debt burden. Cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaled $173.8 million as of June 30th, giving us ample flexibility to fully fund our future growth initiatives.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Moving on to quarterly guidance. We expect Q3 revenue of $121 million at the midpoint, representing 5% year-over-year growth and 2% sequential growth. We also project Q3 Adjusted EBITDA of $16 million at the midpoint, yielding a 13% margin, a significant expansion versus the 8% margin we delivered in the prior year period. We believe delivering growth and margin expansion in a stable hiring environment demonstrates that our differentiated hiring solutions are truly resonating with both employers and job seekers. Leading to the second half of 2026, the labor market remains stable, even as overall hires and quits rate remain near their lowest level since 2015.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Given our strong execution, we believe low single-digit year-over-year revenue growth is a likely scenario, up from our prior expectation of flat revenue, which will result in a full year Adjusted EBITDA margins of 12%-14%, a meaningful margin expansion versus 9% in 2025. This range gives us room to maintain our push into ROI positive marketing opportunities on the employer side, while upholding the cost discipline that drives our operating leverage across the rest of the business. We believe this balance, capturing incremental growth while preserving our commitment to profitability, positions ZipRecruiter to outperform the broader hiring category over the long term. With that, we can now open the line for questions. Operator?

[Operator]

We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Josh Chan with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Josh Chan, Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

Hi, good afternoon, Ian and Dave. Thanks for taking my question. I guess based on your commentary, it seems like the cadence of the quarter accelerated as you went through the three months. Is that the right read? Could you just talk about how things are shaping on a monthly basis into July, perhaps?

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Sure, Josh, great question. This is Dave. Yes, we feel great about how things went in Q2. Obviously, a lot of product and other operational wins resulted in a great quarter for us. As we looked at what happened over the course of the quarter, we did see a nice acceleration over the course of the quarter, obviously, that plays into showing 5% year-over-year growth, which is a nice acceleration. While at the same time being able to expand margins year-over-year from 8% in the prior year period to 12% this quarter. Then as we look going forward based on what we saw in Q2 and thus far into Q3, everything we see makes the guidance we're talking about very reasonable to continue at the midpoint at 5% year-over-year growth.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

We saw a very nice quarter across multiple product and other executional wins that drove job seekers and employers to come together with greater engagement, we saw that translate through to the numbers.

[Josh Chan, Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

That's great to hear. Thank you. Then, on the improvement in the hiring, are you attributing this to your success in improving the matching, or is there any macro-related lift? Relatedly, are you seeing any trends across verticals, size of employers, that's really growing in your platform? Thank you.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Great question. This is Ian. What we saw in Q2 was momentum created predominantly through product improvements as well as some additional marketing. When you look at the product improvements we rolled out, and whether you're looking at the improvements we made to Be Seen First, which creates an 8% lift for candidates who record a message to try and better stand out to the employer, or you look at the Next Gen search engine, which lifted quality candidates by 34%. Really, all of those improvements are designed to do one thing, and that's to stoke a conversation between the employer and the job seeker. The metric that all of those improvements ladder up to is that response rate from the employer per application. When you look at that year-over-year in Q2, that response rate doubled.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

A significant portion of our momentum comes from just the fact that there is a lot more activity, which creates satisfaction on both sides of our marketplace when the two sides engage. When you look at the macro, if you just look at the data that's out there, we're definitely still in what I'd call a subdued labor market. It was stable with Q1, but you're looking at hires and quits that are near 15-year lows when you look back over the trajectory of those two metrics. The macro was a non-factor in Q2 as it relates to the momentum we created. It was all driven by our operational success.

[Josh Chan, Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS]

That's great. Thank you both for the color and congrats on a good quarter.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Sheridan with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Thanks for taking the question, and thanks for all the prepared detail in the shareholder letter. Building on the themes you guys talked about around product and AI innovations, and helpful to get those early data points around next-gen search and Smart Outreach. How should we be thinking about the momentum around those types of initiatives building over the next six, 12, 18 months? What are you watching for to get a sense of how those could impact the business over the medium to long term as they build in that momentum? Thanks so much.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Thanks, Eric. Good question. Our product strategy's relatively simple. We are trying to drive up the rate at which employers and job seekers have real, meaningful conversations. It defines all of the initiatives that we are focused on and the features that we are implementing into our site. What we have seen, and continue to see, is that when we drive up the rate at which these two sides are engaging, satisfaction materially improves on both sides, as does long-term engagement. I think you should expect to hear us talking about increasing conversations for the next 12 months, the next 24 months, and probably for a long time beyond that. That is the simple formula that we have discovered for both making our product better and driving our financial results.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

When we look at the features that we have launched, so many of them have been enhanced by AI in one form or fashion. AI is just a tool, and it is one important tool, but it is certainly not the only tool that we have available. There is a component of all this, which is the extraordinary amount of data we have on the historical interactions between job seekers and employers, which is what we are using to train a lot of the features that we have been building and what made the next-gen search platform possible. It's not just a straight technology advantage. It is a data advantage that we are leveraging and that is unique to our business after 15 years of operation.

[Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Josh Beck with Raymond James. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Glenn Schell, Analyst at Raymond James]

Great. Thanks. This is Glenn Schell on for Josh. Just quickly, how should we be thinking about the progression from better matching to more employer conversations and ultimately stronger retention or monetization?

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

I think the high-level answer and the simple answer to that question is, the more that employers engage with job seekers on our platform, the longer they stay with our service and the more they spend. That correlation has been in place for essentially all time at ZipRecruiter. Vice versa, the more job seekers talk to employers, the longer they stay engaged, the more jobs they explore, the more jobs they apply to. There's sort of a virtuous loop here that as you increase engagement, you get this strongly correlated benefit with longer-term engagement for both sides of our marketplace. We are both operating against that principle and seeing the benefit of it play out as we have in both Q1 and Q2 now.

[Glenn Schell, Analyst at Raymond James]

Good. Thanks. Just one more. What have you learned from the deeper ChatGPT integration about traffic quality and conversion? What gave you confidence to build a Claude connector?

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

Well, we did the Claude connector first. We recently announced the ChatGPT version of that. It's really interesting because what we found is that the traffic that comes through those two channels, while still a small portion of our overall traffic mix, is what we describe as high-intent traffic. These are active job seekers who are in the process of actively looking for a job. As a result, their engagement on our service is on the higher end of what we see from job seekers. If you think of it as a spectrum from the browser to the active job searcher, the traffic we're getting from these sources falls much more in the bucket of active job searcher. The really exciting thing for us is we're there right from the beginning.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

We are essentially at the launch of these two services with these two fundamental platforms. Both of them are growing at a healthy clip. We'll continue to track and report back to you guys on what we see in terms of overall traffic volume from them. For right now, both services are growing. It's fun to watch and be there from the beginning.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Just to add on to that in terms of how this fits into the history and product philosophy of Zip, Glenn. From the very first days when Ian started this business, we found job seekers at Web 1.0 job boards, and we found them then increasingly in search and then in social networks. Increasingly, as job seekers' behavior has evolved, and now we see the behavior evolving toward LMs. We will be there too, increasingly finding for that particular means of starting a job search.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

How are we best able to add value and then build brand resonance with the job seeker, provide value, bring them directly to ZipRecruiter or Connect with them through a third party like a ChatGPT or a Claude, and make sure wherever the job seeker wants to start looking for work, we're going to be there to partner with them and add a bunch of value and build a long-term relationship. This is part of a playbook that we've done many times before. We see it playing out now with LMs. We anticipate it will play out again in the future as job seeker behavior continues to evolve.

[Glenn Schell, Analyst at Raymond James]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Your next question comes from the line of Justin Patterson with KeyBanc. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Justin Patterson, Analyst at KeyBanc]

Great. Thank you. Good afternoon. Maybe I can build on some of the earlier themes in there. It sounds like the next-gen search and matching capability is a meaningful improvement versus what's existed previously. As you step back and just consider what a macro recovery looks like, how would you think about the pace that the business can grow at with these new capabilities in hand versus what existed previously, and how you might reinvest incrementally into marketing during a recovery scenario? Thank you.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

Great. Thanks, Justin. Great question. Obviously, we're thinking all the time about as we continue to improve the marketplace and improve the product experience for both job seekers and employers, a number of examples you just shared there being good examples of that. How does that impact our willingness to invest, and how does that impact our ability to grow? We've been very pleased that this past quarter hires were flat in the total economy, and we grew 5%. I think as we execute, we feel very confident that we'll be able to continue taking share and outgrow the market in an environment like that. Obviously, as we've experienced over the past few years, as you referenced, macro has an impact.

[David Travers, President and Interim CFO at ZipRecruiter]

We're very pleased that product innovation, like what we're talking about today, gives us the ability to outperform in all parts of a macro cycle. As we think ahead, makes us very excited about the momentum we feel and hence the ability to grow 5% at the midpoint of guidance into Q3. We'll see what the future brings. As always, we will be ready for a wide range of scenarios that macro throws at us. More importantly, we'll be ready to help perform because we can execute and we have an excellent product roadmap that will continue to improve and evolve.

[Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO at ZipRecruiter]

I would just add to that the nature of our business is one where the happier our customers are, the longer they stay and the more they pay. These product improvements have definitely contributed to the satisfaction of our employer customers, the side of our marketplace, which pays us. That immediately unlocks more ROI-positive marketing, increases the lead flow that we can bring through our service. What you're seeing right now is really the product of product improvements, unlocking ROI-positive marketing, and then I would say the thoughtful increase in investment in marketing based on the trends that we're seeing. This is not yet a macro that is recovering, and we look forward to that scenario playing out and are excited about the potential that it represents.

[Operator]

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. This concludes today's call. Thank you for

Participants

Executives

• Emilio Sartori, Head of Investor Relations
• Ian Siegel, Co-founder and CEO
• David Travers, President and Interim CFO

Analysts

• Josh Chan, Executive Director and Equity Research Analyst at UBS
• Eric Sheridan, Analyst at Goldman Sachs
• Glenn Schell, Analyst at Raymond James
• Justin Patterson, Analyst at KeyBanc