Interview with Yardenne Assa, CEO and Co-Founder at Hiring Prediction Technology: Unboxable

I’m Yardenne Assa, co-founder and CEO of fast-growing hiring prediction technology, Unboxable. I’ve always been an impact entrepreneur and builder of democratization tech, with a magnet-strength pull towards value-driven businesses.

In my previous role as an investor, I witnessed how hiring decisions and team fit could break or make a company, which impacted me greatly and planted the seed that would grow into Unboxable.
 
 

 

How did you come up with the idea for Unboxable?

 
I met my co-founder Stephie Knopel at a female entrepreneurs community – DoubleYou. We connected over our shared lived experience of companies putting us into restrictive boxes which starts with a CV and continues with a specific role definition, instead of looking at us as Talents who needed to be unboxed.

Both of us, as employers, experienced how impossible it was to reduce someone down to a list of professional labels and predict the potential success of a candidate by looking at their CV. What were we meant to extract from a flat & static document with a few lines of information?

The problem was clear: the market was full of solutions that could outline skills and experience, but those aren’t good stand-alone predictors for the potential success of a candidate within a specific opportunity. The current protocol which uses outdated tools and generalized predictors of success has resulted in hiring in 2022 being completely void of contextualizing Talent and employers. “Context” is what differentiates Unboxable from the rest of the ecosystem and allows us to bring unmatched results.

Our Job Simulators surface a candidate’s technical & relational skills, work style, and communication style which can be seen in light of the specific requirements of the employer, from the role itself to the hiring manager and through to the company as a whole. We’re allowing both parties to surface unique predictors of success and allowing them at an early stage to see how the relationship would unfold. Unboxable answers the question: “Will a candidate be able to thrive under a specific hiring manager?”

We’re moving the needle because everyone is suffering from 46% of the world’s hires being bad hires that don’t last beyond 12 months. Instead, Unboxable has a success rate of 93% of highly compatible matches. This is why our prediction tech is more important than ever if employers are to transition from the Great Resignation to the Great Hire.
 

Where does Unboxable fit in with The Great Resignation?

 
​​There’s a lot of talk around the Great Resignation and rapid change. Data actually shows that a high number of Talent were already leaving their jobs in the years leading up to 2021 and it’s been a candidate-driven market for a while now. The idea that the problem is a Talent shortage is not absolute.

There are untapped, hidden and undiscovered Talent pools that hiring managers are overlooking because they’re viewing Talent through generalized, objective lenses, such as what they did before, where they studied, minimum years in a role, etc. Unboxable, in showing Talent differently, enables people in the position of hiring to see beyond the top 15% of Talent who have the “right” CVs.

Something else to consider is that positions and their DNA are being rewritten. The acceleration of technology and the rise in informal education have turned positions into unknown shapes. In the past, Marketers were required to be great communicators and writers, but today, their in-demand skills include knowing data, SQL or Tableau. In our new reality of hybrid Talent, people are reskilling themselves constantly. This is why Unboxable is the right technology for today’s hiring market; we allow Talent and companies to be the breathing systems that they are. Unboxable is the only accurate system that lets both parties fit each other as they change shape.

I feel that Unboxable is in a unique position to help rebuild the protocol and move the market towards the Great Hire, guiding people on how to optimize the opportunity to find the most incredible Talent for their open roles.
 

What can we hope to see from Unboxable in the future?

 
We know that Talents are being hired with our tech and we’re really changing people’s lives. Our data shows that 30% of Talents our clients hire are candidates they’d never see if they were only hiring by CV. This is huge for companies and also for new hires who are finally being seen in a different way.

When I think about the future of Unboxable, I’m excited. We don’t feel any limits on our potential; the sky’s the limit.
We’re working towards being the central source or repository of skilled Talent, creating a technology that automatically matches Talent to roles and companies they’re completely compatible with.

At the end of the day, our mission is to allow everybody to thrive, making sure they spend their working hours where they feel growth and happiness. Unboxable will forever try to democratize the hiring process so that both sides are making smart, data-driven decisions, just like in every other layer of our lives. It’s time for people to get control of their careers.