Pomello

pomello
Co-founders Oliver Staehelin (left), Catherine Spence and Xian Ke
  • What it's doing: Predicting 'cultural fit' with data

Determining whether a candidate will fit into office culture can be hard.

Pomello, which launched in December 2013, takes a data-driven approach to evaluating how potential hires will fit into a company's environment.

The startup has hiring managers survey a minimum of two (but typically five to 10) current employees to understand what type of work most appeals to them and what's most important to them in a work environment. This helps recruiters understand the top values at a firm or in a team. Job candidates then take a similar survey.

By providing structure to the interview process, the startup seeks to eliminate unconscious biases in hiring. There are roughly 200 companies on the platform (including First Republic Bank (FRC)).

"We didn't start out trying to address diversity," said co-founder Catherine Spence, who hails from Stanford Business School and previously worked as an investment strategist at BlackRock. "But our data gets at the underlying core values people hold and has the potential to counterbalance some of the cognitive biases that come into play."

First published March 30, 2015: 4:10 PM ET

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