Why I Built Qualifyr: A Skills-Based Hiring Platform That Actually Works

I've spent 11 years placing people in jobs. Thousands of candidates. Hundreds of companies. And somewhere around year five, I realized something uncomfortable: the system I was part of was fundamentally broken.

Not broken in a small, fixable way. Broken in a way that hurt everyone involved.

I watched talented candidates career changers, self-taught developers, military veterans transitioning to civilian roles get rejected by algorithms before a human ever saw their application. Their crime? A resume that didn't hit the right keywords.

I watched companies spend $30,000 hiring someone who looked perfect on paper, only to realize within months that the person couldn't actually do the job.

I watched the same cycle repeat, year after year, while both sides complained that the process was terrible.

Qualifyr is what I built to fix it.

The Problem I Couldn't Ignore

Traditional job boards are built for volume, not value. They profit from more clicks, more applications, more chaos. Indeed and LinkedIn don't care if your hire works out they get paid either way.

The result is a system that fails spectacularly at its one job: connecting the right candidates with the right employers.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

For employers: You post a job. You get 300+ applications within a week. 75% are unqualified. You spend weeks screening resumes, looking for keywords, trying to guess who might actually be able to do the work. You interview 10 people. You hire one. Six months later, there's a coin flip chance they work out.

For candidates: You apply to 100 jobs. Your resume gets parsed by ATS systems looking for exact keyword matches. 90% of your applications are rejected automatically. The ones that get through? You might hear back in three weeks. Or never. Meanwhile, you're told to "network more" as if that's an option for everyone.

The ability to do a job has almost nothing to do with the ability to write about doing a job. But traditional hiring treats them as the same thing.

What Qualifyr Does Differently

The core idea is simple: let people prove what they can do.

Instead of screening for keywords, we let employers create challenges that mirror real work. Instead of parsing resumes, we show employers actual work samples. Instead of guessing, everyone has evidence.

How it works for employers

You post a job with a challenge attached. The challenge takes 10-20 minutes and tests the actual skills you need. A financial controller role might ask candidates to analyze a set of statements and identify issues. A marketing role might ask them to outline a campaign strategy. A developer role might present a debugging problem.

When you review candidates, you see their work first. Not where they went to school. Not which buzzwords they used. The actual output of their thinking.

You learn more from a 20-minute challenge than from a polished resume and a 45-minute interview where someone tells you what you want to hear.

How it works for candidates

You complete challenges that actually demonstrate your abilities. No more keyword optimization. No more guessing what the ATS wants. You show what you can do, and that's what employers evaluate.

Every challenge you complete becomes part of your skills portfolio. Career changers, self-taught professionals, and anyone whose resume doesn't tell their full story finally has a way to prove themselves.

And here's something we believe strongly: exceptional work deserves recognition. When you complete challenges well, you earn rewards. The job search shouldn't just drain your time and energy it should reward your effort.

Who Qualifyr Is For

Employers who are tired of resume games

If you've hired someone who looked great on paper and flopped in the role, you know the problem. If you've watched qualified candidates get filtered out by keyword-matching systems, you know the problem. If you've spent weeks screening applications just to find a handful worth interviewing, you know the problem.

Qualifyr gives you signal instead of noise. You see work, not words. You make decisions based on evidence, not guesswork.

Candidates whose resumes don't tell their story

Maybe you're a career changer with transferable skills that don't map neatly to job titles. Maybe you're self-taught in your field. Maybe you're returning to work after a gap. Maybe you're just tired of applying to hundreds of jobs and hearing nothing back.

On Qualifyr, your skills speak for themselves. You complete challenges, build a portfolio of real work, and get evaluated on what you can actually do.

Why This Matters Right Now

The shift toward skills-based hiring isn't a trend it's a correction that's been overdue for decades.

45% of employers now say they prioritize skills over degrees when hiring. Major companies are dropping degree requirements. The economy is changing in ways that make traditional credentials less meaningful and demonstrated abilities more important.

But most companies don't have a good way to actually evaluate skills. They say they want to hire based on ability, then default to the same resume-screening processes that have always failed them.

Qualifyr is the infrastructure that makes skills-based hiring practical. Not as an aspiration, but as a day-to-day reality.

What's Next

We're launching in January 2025, and I'm genuinely excited about what we're building.

For employers: free job posting, AI-graded challenges across 18 professional verticals, detailed scorecards that surface top performers, and a candidate experience that actually attracts A+ talent instead of driving them away.

For candidates: a chance to finally show what you can do, build a portfolio that travels with you, and get rewarded for demonstrating excellence.

The hiring system has been broken for a long time. I've spent 11 years living inside that broken system, watching it fail talented people and waste company resources.

Now I'm building something better.

Welcome to Qualifyr.