Pre-employment screening and assessment platform TestGorilla has secured $70m in its Series A funding round. “By replacing resumes with more than 220 scientifically validated tests, our platform helps to create a level playing field where every candidate can compete on equal terms”, said Wouter Durville, founder of TestGorilla.
The end of the CV?
Unreliable, incomplete and subjective CVs are public enemy number one, according to Wouter Durville, the founder of TestGorilla. “Too often, the recruitment process requires hiring managers to spend hours screening unreliable, incomplete, subjective CVs”, Durville says. “By replacing resumes with more than 220 scientifically validated tests, our platform helps to eliminate hiring bias, creating a level playing field where every candidate can compete on equal terms.”
Studies show that job success is most strongly correlated with multi-measure assessments, whereas CVs and work experience are the weakest links.
TestGorilla is leading the way in skills-based hiring – an increasingly popular way to recruit that gives every candidate an equal chance to prove their abilities and motivation. Adopting skills-based hiring helps businesses recruit top talent and more diverse candidates, faster, easier and with less risk of bias. Studies show that job success is most strongly correlated with multi-measure assessments, whereas CVs and work experience are the weakest links.
Objective assessments
TestGorilla’s platform caters to this by offering organisations hundreds of pre-employment tests that enable them to tailor their candidate search to their exact requirements. Areas covered by the assessments range from quantitative skills to cognitive ability, enabling prospective employees to compete on merit rather than background.
The ability to assess applicants objectively helps remove the unconscious bias that can creep in when recruiters have dozens of CVs to screen.
The ability to assess applicants objectively, by comparing their ranked results before deciding which candidates to invite for an interview, helps remove the unconscious bias that can creep in when recruiters have dozens of CVs to screen (they spend, on average, six seconds reading each one). This results in a more diverse workforce. TestGorilla’s own team is a case in point and studies also show that diverse teams perform better.
The proof is in the cases
TestGorilla’s solutions are already used by a vast number of companies — including Bain & Company and Atomico. “Using TestGorilla as a screening tool has helped us to reduce the bottom 30% of applicants and replace these with better-qualified candidates, improving the success rate of our subsequent rounds”, says Laurens-Jan Olsthoorn, a partner at Bain & Company. “We have seen a strong correlation between candidates’ performance in TestGorilla assessments and in the interview process, so we trust TestGorilla to make a great first cut from a large number of applicants.”
“We have seen a strong correlation between candidates’ performance in TestGorilla assessments and in the interview process.”
“Finding the right people is increasingly challenging for even the world’s best brands, and the pandemic has opened employer eyes to huge untapped pools of global talent”, says Atomico’s partner Luca Eisenstecken. “TestGorilla is seeing incredible growth with its automated, data-driven approach to solving this problem. And they’re doing this while delivering a fairer hiring process based on skills rather than resumes, eliminating the biases that prejudice decision-making.”
Expanding test library and team
The $70m investment was co-led by the London-based venture capital firms Atomico and Balderton Capital. The funding brings the company’s total investment to $80mfollowing previous investment from Notion, Partech, and CapitalT. Luca Eisenstecken from Atomico and James Wisefrom Balderton Capital will join TestGorilla’s board as part of this investment round.
The company expects to hire 100 new employees in the coming year.
Much of the recent investment will go towards expanding TestGorilla’s test library — as well as its own recruitment plans. The company expects to hire 100 new employees in the coming year. The ongoing development of their proprietary technology is said to include the platform’s integration with further Applicant Tracking Systems. Enabling employers to use the product seamlessly from within their existing ATS, and the introduction of new features to satisfy the requirements of mid-sized businesses.
