Indianapolis Startup Secures Investment to Expand Recruiting Platform

May 13, 2021

INDIANAPOLIS – Qualifi, a phone-based interview platform designed to help recruiters, today announced that it has completed a pre-seed round of funding including investments from Elevate Ventures and Sixty8 Capital with participation from Debut Capital, Flywheel Fund, Queen City Angels, and Techstars.

Qualifi’s platform allows recruiters to screen hundreds of candidates in minutes while instituting structure to help mitigate bias. Recruiters record their voice to ask screening questions and create a structured interview. The candidates are invited via text or email, prompting them to begin the interview. With the on-demand platform, candidates can press “start” and the Qualifi system will dial their phone where they can pick up and answer the questions in the call. The responses are recorded, transcribed, and made immediately available to the recruiter.

“Through hard work and honest critical thinking, the Qualifi team has landed on a fantastic idea with potential to change the world,” said Mark Gramelspacher, entrepreneur-in-residence at Elevate Ventures. “I know through my own experience as a hiring manager, it’s literally impossible to eliminate bias in candidate selection despite your best intentions. I look forward to seeing Darrian and his team grow the product and their company to lead the country and world in bias-free recruiting practices that will get the best candidate into key positions faster.”

CEO Darrian Mikell said the idea for Qualifi began in 2017 along with co-founders Keenan Jaenicke, Devyn Mikell, and DeSean Prentice. Since the company officially launched in 2019, thousands of interviews have been completed. With this round of funding, the team will focus on improvements to the platform and expanding its customer base.

“As the world continues to recover and return to work, Qualifi is excited to be a part of the reason recruiters are able to hire great candidates faster,” said Darrian Mikell. “This capital is going to help us make key improvements to our technology and expand our reach to more recruiting teams.”