Aivy

The HR start-up wants to make personnel selection more non-discriminatory and has developed a game-based test procedure for applicants. You talk to us about your innovative technology, reasons during Corona and why Steve Jobs would be a good dinner companion.

You offer recruiting software, of which there are already quite a few on the market. What makes you special?

Attention, Aivy is not just another recruiting software. We make companies' existing personnel selection more efficient, more certain and fairer with game-based assessments. These are gamified test procedures based on psychological aptitude diagnostics. In contrast to existing solutions, Aivy is easy to integrate, takes significantly less time to implement and is much more appealing to candidates. This is also proven by our strong user acceptance rate of 95%.

How did you come up with the idea of founding your startup?

We ourselves have often gone through lengthy, unappealing application processes and experienced other obstacles in our professional careers. In our academic work (at Harvard University, among others), we also researched the role of psychological aptitude diagnostics and its positive effects on the labor market and thus developed the Aivy approach: psychological aptitude diagnostics for personnel selection - but appealing and data-driven!

Since then, our mission has been to make the individual potential of candidates visible in order to help them develop their potential in the best possible way. To this end, we provide HR managers with meaningful arguments for personnel selection so that they can recruit and develop successful teams. In this way, we not only ensure greater fairness and diversity in personnel selection, but also pave the way for greater satisfaction and productivity in the world of work.

Discrimination in personnel selection is often the subject of public discourse and criticism. Does Aivy provide the solution for non-discriminatory recruiting? And if so, how do you achieve this?

This is an important point that is particularly close to our hearts! Making personnel selection more discrimination-free is one of our visions and is therefore also reflected in our algorithm.

In order to avoid conscious or unconscious discrimination in the selection process, we only include truly relevant diagnostic criteria for each position. We deliberately leave out irrelevant characteristics such as age, gender or origin. In this way, we focus on the individual person and their potential and support HR managers in recognizing this potential, thereby helping them to select the person who is objectively best suited to the position in question.

The HR Award 2020 as "Newcomer of the Year", silver at the "Breakthrough Award" and two DAX companies as clients - 2020 was an outstanding year for you. Did you expect that? And how does it feel?

We are of course delighted that Aivy received so much positive feedback from various quarters in its founding year. The fact that we have been awarded prestigious prizes from our industry and have also been able to win over successful employers for our mission motivates us immensely. We see ourselves as a partner for companies on the path to modern HR and are delighted when they rethink personnel selection with us.

This year was dominated by a star - Covid-19. Economic losses, hiring freezes, short-time working - what was it like for you as a provider of recruiting software?

Of course, we have also felt the effects of the market situation. Many companies had a temporary hiring freeze and other concerns. Budgets were frozen and HR managers postponed decisions. However, actively facing up to such challenges and finding solutions is the hallmark of a strong start-up.

We are therefore focusing on the positive: the need for digital solutions is growing. Many companies have implemented new processes and opened themselves up to new opportunities. We are placing our hopes in this positive change.

And now for something more personal: how has your working day changed this year - do you still enjoy working from home or do you miss teamwork in the office?

As an HR tech startup, we naturally live "New Work" in a special way and we were no strangers to agile and remote working. The complete switch to working from home was therefore not a major problem for us. We have further expanded processes that allow us to stay in personal contact despite the distance. It is important to us to act responsibly, which is why we will continue to work this way for as long as necessary. Of course, we do miss the time together in the office and the personal interaction with our customers at events.

How did your founding team come together, where and how did you get to know each other?

We already knew each other from events and previous projects. What has always united us is the drive to bring about positive social change and to develop digital solutions that can contribute to this. As an interdisciplinary team, we complement each other perfectly, both personally and professionally. For me, this is one of our key recipes for success.

Your app was launched with the support of Freie Universität Berlin - how did you get involved and what exactly did the scholarship help look like?

Our mentor Prof. Dr. Hannes Rothe is co-founder of the Digital Entrepreneurship Hub and works at the Chair of IT Entrepreneurship at Freie Universität Berlin. We benefited greatly from his expertise and the support of Profund Innovation, the start-up service of the FU. They actively supported us and believed in our idea. The scholarship also enabled us to develop our first MVP, successfully test it on the market and gain important impetus for our start-up.

Hand on heart - have you had a real social life since you founded the company?

I don't want to sugarcoat anything, of course we feel like we're working around the clock. But we do it out of an inner drive. We work towards a common goal and in a small team, many tasks fall on just a few heads. But we also strive for a social balance in order to stay healthy and productive in the long term. Sometimes this works more and sometimes less well.

If you could choose a famous person to have dinner with - who would it be?

I'm sure there are a few. The first person that comes to mind is Steve Jobs. His quote: "The only way to do great work is to love what you do" accompanies me every day and motivates me not only to implement this for myself, but also for other people who become satisfied and successful in their professional lives through the use of Aivy.