Phenom, an applied AI company focused on helping employers hire, develop, and retain talent, has acquired Be Applied, an AI-driven cognitive assessment platform that validates candidate and employee capabilities at enterprise scale.
The deal is designed to help large organizations move toward skills-first hiring, with faster, more consistent validation across both high-volume and specialized roles.
Phenom said the combination of its AI platform with Applied’s evidence-based assessments will help employers evaluate what candidates can do, not just what their resumes say, while maintaining speed, quality, and fairness. The company positioned the acquisition to close the growing gap between the momentum behind skills-based hiring and the limited ability of many enterprises to reliably validate skills across roles, industries, and proficiency levels.
The announcement pointed to multiple forces accelerating the shift. Employers are confronting widening skills gaps and rapid workforce transformation, while AI is changing both job requirements and the premium placed on AI-capable candidates. Against that backdrop, Phenom argued that many legacy assessment tools are too generic and disconnected from job-specific requirements, resulting in longer time-to-fill, a higher risk of mis-hires, and continued reliance on credential screening and subjective judgment.
Applied’s cognitive assessment technology is designed to adapt assessments to specific job requirements, industries, and experience levels. Phenom said the platform has been tested across millions of candidates and roles and can scale validation without degrading the candidate experience. The company also cited research suggesting many employers using skills tests report fewer hiring mistakes, and said embedding these assessments into its platform turns skills-based hiring from a stated goal into an operational workflow.
Phenom plans to integrate Applied’s cognitive assessments into its broader suite of skills-related capabilities, including behavioral, situational judgment, and language assessments. The company said the assessments can be delivered within the application flow to improve completion rates and accelerate screening decisions, while adding industrial organizational science rigor to support scientific validation and defensibility.
Beyond hiring, Phenom said the same assessments can be reused for internal skills mapping and gap analysis, enabling a more current view of workforce capabilities. The combined offering is expected to support a unified skills-first experience across the talent lifecycle, spanning sourcing, screening, hiring, and employee development.
KEY QUOTES
“Organizations are moving faster than ever at applying skills to hiring, and they need the infrastructure to support it, Skills assessment agents are essential, and Applied brings the assessment intelligence and data quality that turn intent into execution, so our customers can make faster, fairer, and more precise talent decisions.”
Mahe Bayireddi, CEO And Co-Founder, Phenom
“The shift to skills-based hiring has created a critical gap in how organisations validate talent at enterprise scale, Phenom’s acquisition of Applied is the next logical step in their agentic product roadmap. It directly addresses that gap, and in so doing broadens their customers’ talent pool, surfaces real potential, helps remove bias and accelerates the hiring process.”
David Perring, Chief Insights Officer, Fosway Group
“We’ve spent years working with customers to solve the critical challenge of skills validation, Joining Phenom means we can help more organizations hire the right people faster and with confidence. Together, we can make skill-based hiring a reality at scale.”
Khyati Sundaram, CEO And Chair, Applied
