Koru (Company)

Koru is a privately held talent screening and selection technology company based in Seattle, WA., applying predictive analytics to assessment science to provide some of the world’s leading enterprises^[1] as well as innovative, high-growth companies^[2] with more effective and efficient talent screening, selection and development.

Koru’s roots are in training millennials to be job ready for growing companies. Koru originally ran college-to-career training programs for recent college graduates in Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston and worked with growing companies searching for entry-level talent.^[3] Koru’s transformative work with millennial early-career talent has been profiled in national publications including Forbes, Fortune, The Washington Post, and Time.^[4][5][6][7] The company continues working with early-career talent both in their Talent Innovation Lab and through employer-sponsored development programs, such as LinkedIn’s Accelerate U.^[8]

Over the course of their first three years, Koru worked to understand the needs of the employers^[9] who hired large volumes of recent college graduates. Through this work, Koru identified the core drivers of performance at large enterprises and high-growth, innovative companies.^[10] Named the Koru7™ Impact Skills,^[11] they include Grit, Rigor, Impact, Teamwork, Curiosity, Ownership, and Polish. In 2015, Koru productized the ability to measure the Koru7™ in a proprietary assessment and predictive model-driven automated online talent screening and selection tool and began offering it to large enterprise companies to help them more efficiently increase their quality of hire and diversity. Koru's work in using predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to improve hiring outcomes was featured by Reuters and Fast Company.^[12][13]

History

Koru was co-founded in September 2013 by Kristen Hamilton, co-founder of Onvia and Josh Jarrett; formerly of the Gates Foundation.^[14][15][16] Hamilton spent the greater part of her career in technology and education, including serving as COO of World Learning and Global Director Educator Strategy at Microsoft.^[17] In the spring of 2013, when looking for a way to combine her experience in technology and education, Hamilton and a friend were talking one night about how companies find and hire young talent. Inspired by that conversation, Hamilton later teamed up with higher education innovator Jarrett, who had spent seven years developing and guiding the higher education work at the Gates Foundation using predictive analytics and competency-based assessment. This partnership eventually led to the foundation of Koru in Seattle.^[18]

Koru received seed funding in the amount of $4.35 million in October 2013, led by Maveron, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.^[19][20] Koru added $8 million in funding in 2015 with a Series A round that included original investors as well as the addition of City Light Capital and Trilogy Equity Partners.^[21][22][23] Koru was the winner of the GeekWire Start-Up of the Year in 2015.^[24]

See also

• • Predictive analytics
  • Machine learning
  • Talent management system
  • Pre-hire assessment

References

External links

• Official website