Smarterer has won the 2013 startup competition at the Recruiting Innovation Summit.
The award comes with a $10,000 prize. It was selected by three judges: ERE Media Founder David Manaster, Greylock Partners Talent VP Dan Portillo, and Universum Founder Lars-Henrik Friis Molin. The judging panel considered in its decision the results of an audience vote done via text message (judges and the crowd each received a 50-50 weighting).
Friis Molin says the Smarterer tests are “perfecting themselves” through crowdsourcing. (Here’s more on Smarterer.) He sees it as one of the potential future gold standards in the assessment field. David Manaster said he tried the test and found it as fun as Smarterer claimed. He also said that given Smarterer’s “consumer approach” he also thought the test could be a future gold standard.
It was the elite of an elite group of new tools and technologies rolling out for recruiting departments, including one that would help companies hire teams (vs. individuals); another that would add a one-page candidate proposal to the application process; and another that would help companies create mobile careers sites. And more.
Meanwhile, two other companies were also winners at the event.
RMS, for its work on gamification, was honored as the most innovative in-house recruiting department, through an audience vote comparing it to other corporate recruiting departments who were finalists. In 2012, RMS was also a finalist in the “best corporate career website” (a career site I briefly described here) category in the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. And RMS’s Amelia Merrill talked about the candidate experience at an ERE conference — video here.
Also by audience vote, CodeVue was given the award for the most innovative recruiting product. It’s a tool from HireVue to assess people’s coding abilities.
Mystery Applicant was the honoree at the startup contest last year.