Gyfted / Human Exponent

I co-founded Gyfted with Robert Kowalski (CEO) and Adam Szefer (CTO) to fix a real problem in hiring: most recruitment still runs on resumes and gut feeling. Gyfted (operated by Human Exponent, Inc., a venture-funded C-corp headquartered in Mountain View) replaces that with validated psychometric assessment combined with AI.

What I Do

I own the product and psychometric side. That means designing assessment batteries grounded in Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory, building the integration layer between psychometric models and machine learning algorithms, and overseeing the full product lifecycle from conceptualization to deployment. Every assessment goes through proper validation — item analysis, reliability checks, factor structure review — before it touches a candidate.

The Platform

Gyfted’s assessments cover hiring, talent development, and culture alignment:

• Culture Canvas — Organizational culture assessment based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and Schwartz’s Personal Values frameworks. Measures six dimensions of organizational culture plus individual values alignment.
• Remote Work Assessments — Evaluates personality/culture fit, soft skills, cognitive ability, and growth mindset, producing a composite Remote Work Index score.
• Merit (MEI) — Our bias-free hiring framework measuring cognitive ability, personality, values, and learning agility through blind screening — no age, gender, race, or photos.
• Job Fit & Candidate Screening — Automated two-way matching between candidates and roles using vectorized competency databases, not keyword parsing.

The platform serves growth startups through to large enterprises. We’ve worked with organizations including LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), where we screened 250+ candidates and cut manual review time by 60%, and EPAM, where we assessed 400+ individuals across four pilot talent development programs. We’ve also built career assessment instruments for public-sector bodies like Ireland’s Health Service Executive. Organic growth was driven through programmatic SEO in partnership with Digital Savages.

The Team

We’re a distributed team of 19 across Mountain View, London, and Warsaw — psychologists, statisticians, engineers, ML specialists, and talent operations. Our academic advisory board includes Michal Kosinski (Stanford GSB, computational psychology pioneer) and partnerships with Columbia, Stanford, Cambridge, and SWPS.

Our core matching technology — an AI system built on a psychometrics-based competencies graph that combines validated psychological frameworks (Big Five, Schwartz Values, Emotional Intelligence) with O*NET occupational data and large language models — is patent pending with the USPTO, the result of 2.5 years of R&D. I’m one of five named co-inventors.

We price as a flat SaaS subscription — no per-test or per-candidate fees. Assessment should never be rationed because of pricing.