Tigran Sloyan, CEO CodeSignal
Tigran Sloyan, CEO
Aram Shatakhtsyan, CTO
Sophia Baik, Co-Founder
CodeSignal: ‘Going beyond resumes’ to unlock employee potential
Business leaders have long known that having a consistent and reliable recruitment process is crucial to company success. But how can you make that a reality? Enter CodeSignal, the first company to build an objective, skills-based platform for technical hiring.
For co-founders Tigran Sloyan and Aram Shatakhtsyan, improving the hiring process isn’t just business — it’s personal.
Tigran and Aram grew up in Armenia in the ‘dark and cold’ years of 1990s, getting to know each other through international math and science olympiads.
“But as soon as college kicked in, our paths diverged dramatically,” Tigran recalls.
Tigran went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study computer science and math, while Aram stayed in Armenia, earning a degree in informatics and applied math at Yerevan State University.
“You can imagine when we both graduated, I had a highly sought-after resume because it said, ‘MIT,’” Tigran says. “But Aram’s resume was just not getting picked up by any recruiters because they didn’t see anything that caught their eyes.”
Hiring that relies solely on resumes and behavioral interviews, Tigran and Aram came to believe, creates inconsistency and unfairness in the recruitment process, depriving companies of talent and penalizing employees without ‘flashy’ resumes.
“And so the idea of building a platform that allows for a better understanding of skills, a direct measurement of skills, more consistency, and a more fair way of evaluating individuals was born,” Tigran says.
Fast forward to 2023, and CodeSignal offers companies a package of interview and assessment products to assist in the entire length of hiring process, from using CodeSignal scores to screen prospective employees to bringing in the company’s software to structure follow-up interviews.
“It’s a complete suite of interview and assessment products,” Tigran explains. “At the core of it, we have simulations of different kinds of roles, real life simulations of what you would be doing on the job.”
And business leaders are taking notice: CodeSignal conducted over 800,000 evaluations just last year for major global companies, including Meta, Netflix, and Zoom.
Granatus Ventures took part in CodeSignal’s seed round in 2015, which saw the startup raise about $2.5 million in total.
“That’s what got the company off the ground really,” Tigran says, adding that about 30% of the company is still based in Armenia.
Since then, CodeSignal has raised over $87 million from some of the world’s leading venture capital firms in three series rounds.
“We have all the funding in the world. We have a fantastic team, and we have a major opportunity in front of us. What exactly will happen by the end of this year? Who knows?” Tigran says. “But I think over the next three to five years, we will really do something great.”