Phenom, an AI-powered human resources platform company, has acquired Be Applied, a UK-based AI talent assessment solutions provider, to strengthen its recruitment solutions. Through this acquisition, Phenom plans to add cognitive assessment cases to its existing competency-based assessment capabilities, thereby ensuring its technological competitiveness throughout the entire process from recruitment to talent management.
Founded in 2016, Be Applied provides an adaptive AI assessment platform that quantitatively validates real-world job skills. Unlike traditional resume-centric written assessments, it objectively evaluates job-related behavioral data, such as numerical understanding. The technology provides personalized assessments by automatically adjusting questions based on applicant responses and, based on validated behavioral science and cognitive research, ensures consistent analytical results even in large-scale recruitment scenarios.
The platform can also integrate with existing talent management systems and recruitment tools, allowing recruitment managers to seamlessly integrate scientifically validated competency scores into existing processes and identify top talent early on, thus improving recruitment efficiency. The company explained that Be Applied's technology actually helps increase participation in the assessment process while shortening decision-making time.
Through this acquisition, Phenom gains access to cognitive technology-based solutions in addition to its existing capabilities in behavioral-based, context-based, and language ability assessment. Therefore, Phenom's AI recruitment agent will be able to perform more accurate job-talent matching and is expected to lay the foundation for moving beyond recruitment and building a systematic talent utilization structure.
"Companies are rapidly adopting a skills-based hiring culture, and the technological infrastructure that supports this is crucial," said Maher Bairedi, co-founder and CEO of Phenom. "Through this acquisition, we will ensure the accuracy and fairness of assessments while helping our clients make faster, more accurate talent decisions."
Prior to the acquisition, Be Applied had raised approximately $2.41 million (about 3.47 billion Korean won) in investment from institutions such as Blackbird Ventures, Skip Capital, Angel Academy, and Nesta Impact Investments. Phenom plans to use this assessment data extensively in the future, beyond recruitment, for job design, competency mapping, and other areas to provide a clear skills framework.
