Gyfted / Human Exponent

At Gyfted I own the product and the psychometrics: the assessments, the scoring, and the matching that turns results into hiring and development decisions. I co-founded it with Robert Kowalski (CEO) and Adam Szefer (CTO). Gyfted is operated by Human Exponent, Inc., a venture-funded company based in Mountain View.

Most hiring still runs on CVs and keyword matching, which miss what matters in real work: cognitive ability, values, soft skills and fit. Gyfted measures those directly, with validated psychometric assessments, and uses AI to match people to roles.

What I do

I design instruments grounded in Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory, build scoring and feedback logic, and define competency models for enterprise clients. Every assessment is validated before it reaches a candidate, and results are reported as profiles a recruiter or manager can read and act on.

For enterprise clients I also build custom instruments aligned to their own competency models and values. The selected work below shows what that looks like in practice: one measurement layer for four EPAM programs, screening for LSEG, a values assessment for gr8.tech, and a career quiz for HSE Ireland.

The full product range (culture, remote-work, merit-based hiring and job-fit assessments) is on gyfted.me.

How an engagement runs

You talk to me directly. We start from the decision the assessment has to support (graduate or volume screening, promotion, leadership development, or a competency model your managers already use), and I map it onto constructs that can be measured and validated. I build and pilot the instrument, check that it spreads candidates across the whole scale, and it goes live on the Gyfted platform with scoring and reports your recruiters can read. At LSEG, a typical recruitment cycle on it ran about one month.

Research and IP

Gyfted’s matching technology combines validated frameworks (Big Five, Schwartz values, emotional intelligence) with O*NET occupational data and large language models. It is patent pending with the USPTO after two and a half years of R&D, and I am one of five named co-inventors. The platform was developed with an NCBR research grant, in which I led the psychometric component. Its advisers include Michal Kosinski of Stanford GSB.

Gyfted’s organic growth, to 1.2 million users a year, came from programmatic SEO built with Digital Savages.