Pera, a Netherlands-based predictive hiring software company, has recently raised $$5.5 million (€5 million) in fresh funding. The round was led by Brabant Development Agency (BOM) and current shareholders, including ECG Ventures. With this investment, the Dutch startup plans to help companies strengthen their competitive position by identifying the right talent. It also plans to develop its platform, the Pera Skope, and to expand its position in the Benelux and the UK.
Co-founded by Rina Joosten-Rabou, Summer Xia and Robin Young in 2015, Pera aims to make the ‘time-consuming, biased, and inaccurate professional selection process’ smarter and faster. Using artificial intelligence, language and behaviour datasets, Pera can look at the objective characteristics of applicants. Candidates answer questions, and Pera Skope compares the language with data from the database of successful people in the same role. It partners with well-known corporations such as L’Oréal, UPL, and LyondellBasell and impact firms like Heliox and HeadFirst.
Speaking about the company, Co-founder of Pera, Rina Joosten-Rabou, said:
Companies are struggling with important issues. Look at the energy transition. You need the right people and skills for that. But who are they, and how do you find them? The change agents of the future look different. Pera has spent years researching what leads to job success, and the answer is often completely different from what people think. We can determine success after hiring more precisely than a CV, a game or a conversation from the answer and language used. So quality increases.
Joosten-Rabou added:
Because the method does not look at origin or background, we also discover candidates that would go unnoticed and tap into new talent groups. Therefore, ensuring more diversity based on talent and potential, not on background or experience. We want to be the basis for every HR decision: who to hire, develop, and promote.
Pera claims to have over 5.5 million professionals in its database and seven years of scientific research into organizational performance. It also aims to consistently add intelligence for users, for example, for specific IT profiles.
