HiringBranch is a company that uses responsible native AI to measure skills by role through tailored, open-ended voice and chat conversations with 98% accuracy. Pulse 2.0 interviewed HiringBranch co-founder and CEO Stephane Rivard to learn more about the company.
Stephane Rivard’s Background
What is Stephane Rivard’s background? Rivard said:
“I founded HiringBranch in 2014 – when it was called LearningBranch. LearningBranch was dedicated to training people with language and soft skills to succeed in the global workforce, especially soft skills.”
“I saw a pattern high-volume hiring organizations like call centers were facing – candidates, once hired, performed poorly on the job leading to incredibly high turnover rates.”
“In 2022, HiringBranch was born.”
“With a legacy of collaboration alongside leading academic institutions and contact centers, HiringBranch created the first proprietary language model dedicated to soft skills. Today, candidates around the world have been evaluated using the HiringBranch Soft Skills AI. The algorithms are tailored to each customer by role and industry, and in some cases, by benchmarking top performers.”
“Our mission has always centered around recognizing and augmenting people’s skills, not replacing people with technology.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Rivard shared:
“In 2020, HiringBranch (LearningBranch at the time) was awarded funding from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program to develop and commercialize an AI soft skill evaluation tool.”
“Once the training products took off in academic and institutional settings, and eventually to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centers, BPO clients wanted to train and hire people based on their skills. With a ton of roles to hire for, the BPOs needed to automate the assessment of both soft skills and language skills.”
“More than a decade of training data led to the first proprietary Soft Skills AI with the ability to measure soft skills with up to 98% accuracy.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Rivard reflected:
“My favorite memory is when one of our first customers, Sarah Wise from Fundraising Direct, told me that she stopped interviewing altogether because of HiringBranch, and she could never go back to way the organization operated before. These types of anecdotes reinforce the dramatic impact our product has on the lives of the recruiters we serve.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Rivard explained:
“Soft Skills AI is at the core of everything we do. It is technology that accurately detects and grades human soft skills in real-time without human intervention.”
“Soft Skills AI evaluates human soft skills, including communication and interpersonal skills, and is particularly useful in hiring and talent workforce processes, while our Intelligibility AI measures spoken, written and language comprehension skills. The two AIs work together to shortlist the most skilled candidates for hiring.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since its launch? Rivard noted:
“Our technology continues to be more evolved and accurate as time goes on. Since launching, our AI has proven to be 32%-50% more accurate at measuring soft skills than a majority of assessment technology on the market. This is thanks to the language model that powers it, capable of detecting soft skills more accurately than even Google’s large language model (LLM), the Flan T5-Large dataset.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Rivard cited:
“HiringBranch has accumulated numerous accolades over the last few years. Most recently, the company was awarded $5 million in Series A funding. Previously, HiringBranch was selected to participate in the AI Stream of the exclusive Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), an intense, mentorship program reserved only for massively scalable, science and technology-based companies at seed stage.”
“The investments in the HiringBranch’s technology and exclusive participation in coveted high-growth mentorship programs have paid off. Today, the HiringBranch technology is SOC 2 Type 1 certified (Type 2 in progress) and our AI Governance Framework is world-class, with guidance from the Government of Canada’s Algorithmic Impact Assessment, the Institute of Corporate Directors and NuEnergy.ai. It also adheres to 20-871 (a)(2) of New York City Local Law No. 144. The system is compliant with both the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), and a dedicated team of researchers and scientist conducts ongoing monitoring, testing and quality assurance on the technology.”
“In 2024 HiringBranch proved that its language model can read soft skills with up to 98% accuracy.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Rivard highlighted:
“Fundraising Direct used HiringBranch to reduce time to hire to 48 hours or less by cutting nearly all interviews. As a result they were able to reduce hiring costs by 1.5 FTEs. What’s even more impressive is that the candidates hired using the HiringBranch assessment, who didn’t go through an interview, increased sales by 10%!”
“In another instance, HiringBranch analyzed bad hire rates at a global organization with over 100,000 employees, focusing on a sample of nearly 1,000 employees who took the HiringBranch assessment during their candidacy. A bad hire, defined as an employee fired within three months, occurred at a rate of 4.5% before using the assessment, costing the company an average of $14,900 USD per bad hire. After implementing the HiringBranch skills assessment, the bad hire rate dropped to 0.5%, saving the organization millions of dollars in one year.”
“You can read more of our case studies here.”
Funding
When asking Rivard about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“On December 10, 2024, we announced CAD 5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Crédit Mutuel Equity, with participation from Export Development Canada and Anges Québec.”
“The funds will fuel market penetration of the company’s innovative Soft Skill AI, using strategic integration partnerships and sales initiatives to North and Latin America, Asia and the UK.”
“This new trajectory comes on the heels of 330% customer growth in the past two years.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition?
“No company can help hire quality candidates better and faster than we can at HiringBranch. Our technology is designed specifically for customer-facing roles. The AI measures the skills needed for these roles with unparalleled accuracy. Some examples of the soft skills our AI measures include empathy, fluency and positive language. We are reducing bad hire rates by over 90% for some of our clients, while others have seen that the candidates who were hired for their soft skills attrit up to 27X less than the candidates hired with traditional processes.”
“Our turnkey solution simulates real job scenarios with industry-tailored content, offering the most relevant candidate experience available. Using proprietary technology, HiringBranch’s AI analyzes open-ended chat and voice responses, enabling precise skills benchmarking, performance correlation, and skill gap identification. This data-driven approach supports targeted soft skills training, unlocking the full potential of talent management.”
“HiringBranch’s innovative open-ended solution is 4X more reliable than legacy multiple-choice question assessments.”
“HiringBranch empowers companies to streamline their hiring processes, eliminate interviews, and enhance overall organizational performance. The solution is ideal for any customer-facing role in contact centers, including sales, customer support, teamwork and leadership.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Rivard concluded:
“Our goal is to become the global standard for soft skill measurement.”
“We plan to continue to scale globally, becoming the go-to resource for skills-first organizations. We are unlocking the power of soft skills in the workforce by measuring what used to be immeasurable.”
