Tom's Notes:
We’ve all run into some version of the same problem. As candidates, we know we can do a job well, but we lack the professional experience to land an initial interview. As employers, we’ve got open positions to fill, and we want to fill them with the right candidates. Unfortunately, a traditional resume makes it nearly impossible to predict who those candidates are.
This problem affects Fortune 500 companies and small startups alike, and it’s one Omer Molad and co-founder David Weinberg set out to solve. They’ve since created Vervoe, an AI-powered skill-testing platform that helps companies hire based on merit, not background.
Resumes have been around since Leonardo da Vinci. (Literally—he created the first one in 1482.) Once upon a time, a chronological representation of your working life made sense. The important part was proving that you’d spent a certain amount of time working away at a trade.
Hiring based on background means you’re less likely to end up with the best person for the job. So it isn’t just a form of bias and discrimination (even if it’s unintentional)—it’s bad business.
So why do we do it? Apart from our cognitive biases, Omer says, recruiters are screening for efficiency gains and time savings.
In a way, we’ve weaponized screening tools by focusing more on the tools themselves than on the reason they exist in the first place: hiring the right person for the job. Vervoe has approached the challenge of hiring talent in a fundamentally different way: see people do the job before they get the job.
“Most people don’t want a guarantee,” Omer says. “They just want a fair chance and a level playing field.”
Episode 12: How to Grow Your Team By 5X Without Breaking a Sweat
Episode 11: Why Company Values Should be Discovered, Not Designed
Episode 10:Why Traditional Employer Branding Is Broken—And How to Fix Yours
