Starting up with Maya Huber

On Tuesdays, we get into the weeds with the founders of HR tech startups. Want to tell us about your company? Get in touch here.

Maya Huber is the co-founder and CEO of TaTiO, a recruitment platform that seeks to usher in a new era of talent acquisition that isn’t reliant on résumés. The company hopes to tackle this challenge with AI-enabled skills assessments that compile reports on candidate performance and potential for HR teams. Since launching under the name Skillset in 2019 and subsequently rebranding, TaTiO has raised almost $6 million from a variety of investors,including Techstars and Good Company. Huber spoke with HR Brew about interrupting the standard methods of recruitment and her thoughts on HR tech’s future.

What product or service does your company offer? We connect companies and job-seekers based on competencies alone. Basically, it’s a two-sided marketplace…Our candidates are active—it’s not web-scraping or something passive. So, we pull candidates into our platform, they are engaged in “smart simulation” tests—we call it job experiences, where they can experience the core tasks or tasks of any job—we analyze the performance online, and then we match them to relevant job openings based on our competencies. On the other side of the marketplace, this is the product we sell: We offer recruiters a platform where they can reach an updated pool of anonymous candidates ready and qualified and available…based on their competencies.

What specific issue in HR does your company intend to solve? Using résumés leaves out a lot of people that are not taking a significant part in the workforce. And for years, people thought it [was] a problem [for] underprivileged populations, but it’s not only them: People in career change, junior employees, people in a continuous education program—their résumés do not reflect their skills. So, there must be a new approach. This is what we try to do. Our mission is to create new job matching standards that will enable job-seekers and companies to find good matches based on competencies.

How does your product hope to solve these issues? We offer new paths for people to apply and to be tested for jobs based on their own competencies. We basically do a reverse-engineering of the process. Instead of posting a job and looking over hundreds, if not thousands, of résumés, then sort[ing] them using IDs or manually and interview[ing] some of the people, we start the process with assessments, [so candidates can] experience the job. Then we offer both sides a better decision-making tool. Because the candidates get feedback about their performance, they can have a better understanding of their ability to do a job. Then they’re matched only to relevant positions.

What kind of companies are your primary customers? We are a B2B company in terms of a business model…we’re more experienced in the industrial manufacturing, supply chain industry, or around service, sales, and retail. So, those are our main customers, although we also work with aviation companies, with the flight attendants. We have a unique pricing model where we guarantee continuous hiring for years, so you pay per slot with the commitment of us filling this position throughout the year.

How do you think the HR tech field will evolve over the next 5 to 10 years? I really hope to see more solutions that will be focused on skills-based hiring, competencies-based hiring, and more solutions that will provide other options for candidates and to companies to find their match. Because right now, résumés or applications are the only way to go.

How do you think your company will help drive that evolution? I really wake up every morning to move forward with this paradigm change. I think we should all stop waiting for solutions, because the HR tech space is crowded, and the recruiting process has become so fragmented. This is a time where we need new approaches, new paradigms that will look at the hiring process differently. We [shouldn’t] feel that we need to automate everything. I think we should look at the processes deeper to have a better understanding of what both sides will require. I wish that the solutions out there will also meet the changes of the future of work, not just about the technology, but also the way people are engaged in work.

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