AI that looks beyond your resume
Rina Joosten is the founder of Pera, a model that analyzes language and links patterns to revenue, retention, and productivity.
Published on September 17, 2025
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“No one can find the perfect match between a job and the best candidate,” says Rina Joosten, founder and CEO of Pera. That's why Joosten and her team developed AI that sees what we can't see with the naked eye and don't notice in conversations. “Our customers hire people who are on average 26% more productive,” says Joosten. She is also a judge during the AI Pitch Competition. During the development of her technology, she learned important lessons that she is happy to share with start-up entrepreneurs. As she herself says: “Show as quickly as possible that your idea works.”
L'Oréal opened the door to other customers
Over a period of 10 years, Joosten and her team of hundreds of thousands of employees collected data on how they contribute to revenue growth, profit, and customer satisfaction, but also on how colleagues value each other. Over the years, the model has been refined into three questions that companies such as L'Oréal, Rituals, and Corendon use to screen all applicants. AI compares the answers with Pera's unique dataset.
What started as an annoyance—that people don't end up in the right workplace—grew into a thriving company with offices in Den Bosch and Amsterdam in ten years. Joosten now knows other companies that are interested in Pera—she recently entered into a partnership with the online learning platform Goodhabitz—but, as Joosten says, “it wasn't like that at all in the beginning.” Many companies she approached turned her down. L'Oréal was one of the first customers to say yes. Joosten tested the first minimum viable product there. The tests were successful, and the company was able to identify better people more quickly. This opened the door to other customers for L'Oréal.
“An idea is just an idea,” says Joosten. “It only starts when you show that it works.” Joosten emphasizes that it doesn't have to be perfect yet. “My first product wasn't even a product, but consisted of Excel sheets.”
Three questions, a world of data
This is how the product works: A candidate is asked three open-ended questions. For example, what is the most interesting thing about you that is not on your resume, or what does good leadership mean to you? Using AI, Pera's model analyzes the answers and assesses more than 200 subtle language patterns that we often don't see ourselves. Joosten: "Language is a unique fingerprint of who you are. You can't manipulate language.“
AI then compares this analysis with unique datasets developed in-house to predict whether someone is the most suitable candidate for the job. Joosten explains: ”We don't work with public datasets. We have spent years collecting data on the development of employees within an organization: what is their behavior, what competencies do they have? How does that correlate with higher turnover, high retention, faster growth, more innovation, or greater customer satisfaction? With our model, we can quickly recognize the patterns between softer personal qualities and harder business outcomes."
Other markets
Joosten also wants to use the technology in other sectors. For example, in insurance, to combat fraud or ensure good underwriting, whereby the insurer assesses the risk when taking out a policy. Pera is also working with Goodhabitz to give companies insight into how employees learn and how those learning paths contribute to the success of the organization.
Network of like-minded people
Looking at the AI Pitch Competition, Joosten is curious about all the innovations that entrepreneurs will come up with. For her, the competition is a platform that opens doors to the right contacts and knowledge. Not only those of seasoned entrepreneurs, but also of fellow start-ups.
A platform that gives access to the right people and knowledge. Not only knowledge from entrepreneurs who have been in business for years, but more importantly, from other start-up entrepreneurs.
That is Joosten's message to the participants in the competition. "Entrepreneurship is not all sunshine and rainbows. You also have to be able to deal with uncertainties and setbacks. Develop your own leadership style. Then it helps enormously to be with like-minded people. People you've ‘grown up’ with, with whom you can bounce ideas off, spar, and mirror. People you trust. It's about who you compete with. Even if you're not the ultimate winner, you've gained a whole network. Networking is becoming increasingly important."
Startups had until August 29 to register. From all the registrations, the most promising startups will be selected for a coaching program leading up to the final on November 13. The winners of the latest edition of the AI Pitch Competition will then be announced. The winner will receive €50,000, while the runners-up will receive €35,000 and €25,000 respectively. The audience can also vote: the winner of the Audience Award will receive €10,000.
