Traitify taps former Ad.com executive as it sees growth in talent market

Since rolling out a new product that put its personality assessment platform to use for companies hiring and building teams in 2016, the Traitify team says they’ve seen impressive growth in the area of talent tech. Now the company is bringing on talent from Baltimore’s startup community as it looks to grow.

The Southeast Baltimore startup offers an image-based test that can be completed on a mobile phone in a few minutes. Allowing employers to set a benchmark around specific metrics, the data assists in the process as companies figure out if employees would be a good fit with a company in areas such as skills and culture, or in a specific position. CEO Dan Sines said it can be completed more quickly than traditional pencil-and-paper assessments, and identify candidates in large applicant pools.

The company that started in 2011 as Woofound with a consumer-facing platform is now committed fully to the HR tech space: “We felt like we were in the right area and knew we could make a difference,” Sines said.

Customers have followed. Traitify found growth in working with larger firms, focusing on hospitality, restaurants, retail and call centers where employers see lots of applicants for a single job. It also offers an API that can be integrated into processes at companies that specialize in hiring. Last year, it brought on Ernst & Young, Public Storage, Joann Fabrics, Indeed, Monster and Qualtrics.

“We’ve reached a point where scale is starting to happen pretty aggressively,” Sines said.

With an eye toward further expansion, the company brought on Chris Heine as chief operating officer in December. Heine is a former executive with Advertising.com, the Baltimore adtech firm which was acquired by AOL and later became known as Oath, and a leader of a group with hundreds working across operations, sales and finance. He’ll bring that experience to help the startup put the people and processes in place to help grow.

 Steve Root, former COO of Advertising.com and Millennial Media, also joined the company’s board this year.

“These guys have put together this amazing product that’s getting real traction and customers are seeing value in,” Heine said, referring to Sines, cofounder Joshua Spears and the team of more than 25 people, which includes a four-person presence in San Francisco as well as other distributed team members. Heine sees a company that’s found a fit in the market, where there’s a larger focus on bringing data to the hiring process that can help add automation and objectivity.

“The timing is ideal because of what’s happening in the industry and in HR tech in general,” he said.

The leaders are planning to grow the team further, and Heine said they will seek to tap into talent in Baltimore.