Deutsche Bank, Airbnb, and McKinsey use this personality test to find 'millennial talent' - take a look

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Kristen Hamilton Koru

Koru

Kristen Hamilton, cofounder and CEO of Koru.

Companies as varied as Deutsche Bank, Airbnb, and Reebok are turning to Seattle startup Koru to help them recruit graduates.

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Koru, founded in 2013, uses machine learning and predictive analytics to predict whether candidates will be the right "fit" for a company. Applicants are made to take a 20-minute online test that measures seven personality traits: grit, rigour, impact, teamwork, curiosity, ownership, and polish. It dubs these the "Koru 7."

Your results are then matched up to the company's to see how your specific qualities would likely contribute to the organisation.

CEO and cofounder Kristen Hamilton told Business Insider: "We started the business really fixing a problem as opposed to developing a product. It was really hard for people to pick who to hire when people had the same experience."

"A typical company when they get a huge number of applicants, they slice down that first level of applicants based on two things - where they went to college and how their grades are. That cuts out a lot of potential high performers. Those 2 things have really been proven to not be terribly predictive of future performance. It also cuts out a lot of diversity, so a lot of people from different backgrounds don't get an opportunity to do well."

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Hamilton and cofounder Josh Jarrett jumped on a video call from Seattle, where Koru is based, to talk Business Insider through the test and how it works. They also provided BI with some mocked-up, dummy images of what the tests might look like so you can get an idea of how it works.