I made a lot of mistakes hiring, early on in my business career. the wrong engineering firms, the wrong marketers, the wrong designers. I followed the same old referral and resume or client case studies format and it never worked out.

I switched to tryouts in my second software company because I still didn’t have the necessary technical skills to properly vet engineering talent but I knew what I needed from the product, including performance and experience.

Fast forward to my time in Silicon Valley and I noticed the way most hiring was done - where you went to school, where you worked last or who you were referred by. While all 3 of these are nice none of them told me anything about the person. Could they self manage, were they entitled or empathetic. Who was I hiring? I saw that the person meant more than the practical skills that could be learned. It’s really hard to teach a 25 year old about empathy or communications when they spent the last 25 years being trained in a completely different way.

The biggest takeaway from my time in Silicon Valley was the lack of diversity. In my 10 years there I met 1 black male and 1 hispanic male that worked in any role from marketing to engineering. This made no sense to me, the talent was out there, so why weren't they being hired?

I've hired some amazing people in my career and the one thing they all had in common - none of them worked at Google or went to Stanford. The people I saw as the self managers, the go getters, the people with extreme empathy always looking for the angles - they had been forgotten in the traditional hiring process - but they were my best hires - by far . The lightbulb went off and I knew I had to bring The Tryouts to life - to create an even shot for everyone so that there was no bias in the hiring process.

Cofounder

David Feinberg Calabrese