Applied

Applied is a hiring platform built to make recruitment empirical and ethical, using anonymised applications and skill-based assessments rather than CVs to identify candidates who would otherwise be overlooked. The platform was originally spun out of the UK's Behavioural Insights Team in partnership with Harvard professor Iris Bohnet, and its product is grounded in decision science, work-sample testing and predictive validity research.

The company was co-founded by Kate Glazebrook (CSO and Co-founder), Rich Marr and Theo Fellgett, with Khyati Sundaram joining in 2019 as Head of Product before becoming CEO in 2020. Applied counts Comic Relief, Penguin Random House, the UK Government and a range of US, Australian and European employers among its clients. Internal data published by the company indicates that 60% of candidates hired through the platform would be missed by traditional CV sifts, and that ethnic minority hire rates run approximately four times higher than the UK workforce average.

Applied was acquired by Phenom in February 2026, with the platform set to be integrated into Phenom's enterprise talent intelligence stack as the basis of its skills assessment offering. Applied raised earlier funding from Blackbird and other investors before the acquisition.