Boston-based Filtered.ai has raised a $7 million round to accelerate its hiring cadence, and built out the go-to-market model for its its engineering and developer-focused hiring service, it recently announced.

TechCrunch caught up with the company to discuss not only why it decided to leave bootstrapping behind, but also to dig into how its service could widen the market for some technical roles.

The startup was born back in 2016 out of a need when its founder and CEO Paul Bilodeau started to work on it as an internal project while employed at a consultancy. Filtered later split from the consulting group in 2019, signing a term sheet to raise capital in March of 2020. Then COVID-19 arrived, and things got a bit turbulent.

But before we get lost in the money side of things, let’s talk about what the company does.

Filtered’s product is interesting as it could help shake up a hiring system for technical roles for startups that is rife with bias and wasted time. If you are friends with any developers, for example, or data scientists, you are aware of how not-good their hiring process can be.

To pick two issues: Resumes are often a pretty poor indicator of talent, and on-site whiteboard sessions are super unpopular. Filtered is taking on both by providing skills-based take-home tests with AI aboard to help detect fraud. The hiring company can play back those sessions to see how candidates approached problems. Filtered also allows companies to ask candidates open-ended (Read more...)