Hiring is broken. In Europe, only 56% of job offers are accepted, and nearly one in five new hires leaves during probation. That leaves fewer than half of new hires still in their roles six months after recruitment.
At the same time, investment in recruitment technology is accelerating. The global HR tech market is projected to grow from USD 40 billion in 2024 to USD 82 billion by 2032, while the AI in HR segment alone is expected to quintuple to USD 15 billion by 2030. In the Asia-Pacific, including Singapore, the market is forecast to more than double by 2033.
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Much of this investment, however, still fails to reach the main problem in hiring: how candidates are evaluated. Research shows that a skills-based approach would expand the pool of qualified applicants for AI roles while also improving gender representation in underrepresented fields. For instance, the expansion is predicted to be 12.7× in the UK and 18× in India.
Despite these gains, 98% of Fortune 500 companies continue to rely on applicant tracking systems that filter résumés by keywords rather than proven skills.
Atalef was created as a direct response to this gap. Built on a CV-free, skills-first model, its DeepMatch algorithm sources candidates from the most widely recognised databases for tech talent and validates them with role-specific assessments. The goal is to shorten hiring cycles, reduce costly mis-hires, and provide shortlists that employers can trust.
In this interview with The Future Media, Alex Rashkovan (pictured) Chairman of Atalef and his team, explain why the time for CV-free hiring has arrived and the implications for hiring teams in today’s talent market.
How did the idea for Atalef originate, and what was the initial gap in the market you set out to target?
Our journey began at Filuet during its digital transformation. We became a “suddenly tech” company, facing the same hiring problems that many non-tech firms encounter when they move into technology.
Brilliant developers were getting lost in the résumé shuffle, while we struggled to even define an accurate job description, run interviews, and validate skills. The process of hiring felt like it was stuck in the dark ages. It relied on haystack keyword scans, endlessly scrolling through CVs, and guesswork.
Across Europe, average offer acceptance is 56 percent, and 18 percent of new hires exit during probation, leaving fewer than half of new hires still in place six months later. Mis-hires in technology roles can cost companies more than €100,000 per hire. At the same time, the global HR technology market is already valued at more than 40 billion dollars and is expected to more than double by 2032. These figures show the inefficiency of traditional hiring and the scale of the gap between current hiring success rates and business needs.
It is this frustration that led us to create Atalef as part of Filuet Tech. We didn’t want another job board. We wanted to kill the résumé altogether. Atalef is a CV-free, skills-first way to hire.
Our AI-driven DeepMatch™ matches talent to roles based on actual skills and competencies, culture fit, and potential. It widens talent pools, enhances candidate profiles, and brings accuracy to matching. No fluff. No PDF polish contests. Just hiring that’s faster, smarter, and actually fun.
And with fewer costly mis-hires.
In what ways did your professional backgrounds influence the direction the company has taken?
We’ve lived on both sides of the table. As hiring managers are drowning in CVs, and as candidates are struggling to sell ourselves in bullet points. That pain guided Atalef. We built the platform we always wished we had.
Our leadership team brings different experiences that have influenced the company’s direction. Alex Rashkovan, our Chairman, is a passionate entrepreneur with more than 25 years of experience founding and scaling international ventures in BPO, air-cargo, and self-service technology. His work in international expansion, urban distribution, and B2B customer service gave him first-hand knowledge of the hiring inefficiencies global companies face.
Lior Zelering, Chief Operating Officer and Product Owner, has more than 25 years of experience in digital project and product management, UX and graphic design, and software development. He has worked across sectors from e-commerce and ed-tech to pharma and defence, leading projects for global clients such as Red Bull, Pfizer, and Herbalife. He has managed projects in Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, giving him a global view of how organisations adopt and integrate technology.
Pavlos Charalambides, AI Global Ambassador, brings over two decades of leadership and HR advisory experience. His focus has been on helping HR teams identify the right technology talent in crowded markets and improve hiring results. At Atalef, he uses this experience to connect the platform with global partners and clients.
How would you describe Atalef today to someone evaluating it alongside more traditional recruitment solutions?
If LinkedIn is a dusty filing cabinet, Atalef is Tinder meets Duolingo—but for hiring. Swipe, match, hire. Faster, smarter, and honestly, way more fun.
Hiring teams are finding themselves at the same brick wall. Job boards are filled with résumés that recycle buzzwords without mentioning the candidate’s actual abilities. Specialised roles in areas like cloud security or machine learning remain difficult to fill, and the competition for these profiles is intense. Recruiters spend hours manually screening applications, only to have strong candidates slip through filters. The costs of mis-hires are high, including the salary, the failed or missed projects, and the additional workload on already burned-out teams. On top of this, top developers won’t wait to go through slow processes. They move on.
Atalef was built to address these issues. Our top product is our AI-driven, CV-less algorithm, DeepMatch, which knows the difference between someone who “played with React once” and “built production apps in React.” It pulls profiles not just from LinkedIn but also from other major tech talent databases, then validates them with role-specific coding challenges that mirror the actual job. So, hiring managers receive a shortlist of profiles who have already proven they can do the work. With automation across sourcing and screening, plus integration with applicant tracking systems (ATS), Atalef cuts time-to-hire by up to 50 percent. The result is fewer drop-offs, faster processes, and a smoother experience for both recruiters and candidates.
What sets Atalef apart is that it does the whole job. Other platforms often focus on one step, either sourcing, testing, or screening. Atalef is the only platform on the market that does all three, bringing sourcing, assessing, and screening into one flow. DeepMatch ranks candidates on both skills and context, sets coding tasks tied directly to the job, and, for companies that want more support, Atalef also offers managed services. It is both a platform and a recruitment partner.
You position Atalef as a disruptor in the hiring sector. What, in your view, is being disrupted?
The resume. It’s a relic. We’re disrupting the idea that a PDF defines someone’s worth. Instead, we focus on skills, personality, and real job fit. No keyword fluff or trick formatting required.
The timing makes this disruption absolutely necessary. Tech talent demand continues to rise worldwide, but many applicant tracking systems are still stuck in workflows designed more than a decade ago. Companies can no longer afford slow or inconsistent hiring.
Atalef is designed as that upgrade. A CV-free, skills-first solution that reduces risk, speeds up hiring, and delivers validated shortlists that managers can trust.
How do you measure outcomes like time-to-hire, retention, or quality of hire, and what results have you seen so far?
We track what we call the holy trinity: speed, stickiness, and success. On average, our users cut hiring time by nearly half, retention rates go up, and “bad hire” horror stories go way down. Translation: fewer wasted interviews, more developers that actually stay.
The CV-less profile is a central feature in your software. How does it affect decision-making for employers, and what have you learned from candidate reactions?
Employers often tell us it’s like seeing the person behind the paper for the first time. Instead of judging résumés on layout or keyword density, they receive validated profiles built on demonstrated skills and context. This makes decisions more evidence-based and reduces reliance on guesswork.
Candidates respond positively. They no longer need to be résumé poets to land an interview. Many say it is a relief to be judged on ability rather than formatting. For developers, especially, moving from CV polish to skill validation feels both fairer and more motivating.
Bias is a common concern in recruitment technology. What steps do you take to detect and minimise it in your assessments?
Our algorithm does not weigh education prestige or job titles. It measures skills and performance. We constantly audit data for bias. The whole design of Atalef is to strip away the noise that feeds unconscious bias.
We review outcomes across demographic groups to see if there are disparities in how candidates are evaluated. When they do, we adjust the system to ensure fairness.
Our goal is to make assessments objective and to give employers greater confidence in their shortlists.
Your platform offers “continuous interaction” after hiring. What does this involve, and how do you balance useful insight with respect for employee privacy?
We think of it as a “post-hire pulse.” The platform provides companies with ongoing, anonymised insights into engagement and fit. The purpose is not surveillance or micromanagement, but an early signal that something may be off. This helps employers spot mismatches before they turn into costly exits.
Which types of clients gain the greatest benefit from your model, and how does the value differ between smaller firms and large enterprises?
A single bad hire in technology is estimated to cost more than €100,000. Whether you are a small team or a Fortune 500 company, nobody can afford that kind of loss.
Our first clients have been startups, and for them, speed is survival. So, reducing time-to-hire by half can make the difference between shipping a product on schedule or missing the market altogether.
We are now preparing to launch on Azure Marketplace, which will extend our reach to larger enterprises. For bigger organisations, the value lies in efficiency at scale. A streamlined process cuts wasted hours, improves the reliability of matches, and reduces the risk of failed placements.
Integration with existing HR systems is often a challenge. How do you approach compatibility with applicant tracking systems and other established tools?
We play nice. Atalef plugs into popular applicant tracking systems, processes existing databases, and becomes the brains of your hiring stack.
The company doesn’t need to throw out existing tools. We upgrade the systems already in place. Atalef makes sure that the candidates who enter your ATS are validated on skills and match the job description. The result is the ultimate shortlist: fewer irrelevant profiles and more candidates who are ready to move forward.
Beyond technology, what organisational changes are needed for companies to adopt a CV-less, assessment-driven hiring process effectively?
It begins with mindset. Companies need to let go of the résumé security blanket and trust data-driven assessments. This will encourage training recruiters and managers to think in terms of skills rather than tick boxes.
It also requires adjusting internal processes. It’s time for job descriptions to move from generic lists to skills-based profiles that focus on what can be measured and tested. Interview panels need to be briefed on how assessment data should inform their decisions. Leadership teams must be willing to track success by time-to-hire, retention, and quality of hire rather than by the volume of the CVs they reviewed that day.
Thinking of the future, how would you like Atalef to be seen within the recruitment industry?
As the team that finally made hiring not suck. The brand that killed the PDF CV and built the first fully skills-driven hiring platform.
We want Atalef to be known for making hiring faster, fairer, and more engaging. If the industry recognises us as the company that replaced keyword bingo with validated assessments and turned the CV into history, then we will have achieved our goal.
