Resumes are a fundamental part of recruiting, but they only provide so much insight into a job applicant’s suitability. Harver BV, a four-year-old startup based in Amsterdam, claims to have come up with a better means of screening candidates.

The firm offers a cloud service that promises to help companies attract workers with a lower turnover risk while cutting the amount of time spent on each application by up to 90 percent. This pitch has helped Harver land clients such as Netflix Inc., Vodafone Group plc and Xerox Corp. along with a new $8.1 million investment led by Insight Venture Partners. The strong market interest can be credited in large part to the startup’s focus on interactivity.

Clicking on a job application form managed by Harver, a candidate is greeted by much more than the usual questionnaires and fill-in fields. The startup’s TalentPitch platform enables companies to put together a custom series of tests complete with an “immersive” video component for evaluating how well an applicant could fulfill the desired role.

At the start of the review, companies can show an introductory video to give the candidate an overview of the work environment. From there, a gamified evaluation mechanism provides the ability to play a series of clips that each present a different scenario which an employee would be expected to handle as part of their job. Applicants must choose from one of several response options on the screen to demonstrate their situational judgment.

A recruiting manager also can pair the video test with other questions using readymade assessment modules built into TalentPitch. The platform provides the ability to prompt candidates for a verbal introduction and test their proficiency in various skills that they would have to use as part of their day-to-day work.

Once an applicant has completed the evaluation, the results are presented in a dashboard meant to let recruiters quickly identify the most qualified candidates. Harver is mainly targeting segments such as retail and customer service where companies must screen a particularly large volume of candidates to meet their staffing requirements.

This market is emerging as a key focus area for other recruiting startups as well. Among them is San Francisco-based Mya Systems Inc., which offers a chatbot for automating candidate screening that recently attracted $11.4 million in funding.

Image: Harver