Andrew Banks, recruitment veteran, invests in AI start-up Shortlyster

Shark Tank judge and recruiting veteran Andrew Banks has recently backed a AI-based recruiting startup in its $5 million funding round.

Founded by former Temando chief executive Carl Hartmann and organisational psychology expert Rudy Crous in 2015, Shortlyster has developed an intelligent recruitment platform it says matches candidates to jobs based on their skill sets, personality and ability to easily learn new skills and behavioural characteristics.

It took the pair two years of research and development to validate its model, which they claim also removes the unconscious biases that can creep into recruiting by focusing on data. For skills, it compares a person's university qualifications (not just the degree type, but also what subjects they studied and the course content) to the skill requirements for a role and can identify when a person may not on paper meet a set requirement, but in reality would be a suitable candidate.

Banks co-founded recruitment firm Morgan & Banks in 1985, before it grew to more than $800 million in revenue and merged with NASDAQ-listed TMP (renamed Monster) in 1999. He said there were a range of HR tech start-ups that also claim to match candidates to jobs, but he believed Shortlyster's ability to ensure a possible employee was a good cultural fit for a workplace was unique.

Mr Banks said there was no such thing as "perfection" for recruiters, but he believed technology could increasingly help in making better choices.

"I've been looking for years for something that makes the process more reliable. In effect, what [Shortlyster] does is make the average interviewer and average candidate into greater experts about what makes them tick and what culture they're more likely to fit into," he said.

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