Hiring Lab
Stop losing qualified candidates in AI-polished application materials
When you're buried in identical-looking resumes, qualified candidates disappear in the noise—and reviewing steals hours from running your business.
SmartApply shows you what makes each candidate uniquely qualified in minutes, not hours.
The hiring problem small business owners face
The hiring problem you’re up against
You handle hiring yourself—without HR support. You're facing a pattern that makes hiring harder than it should be:
AI-polished materials all look the same.
Every resume is perfectly formatted. Every cover letter sounds qualified. ChatGPT makes everyone look like the perfect candidate—which means real signals get buried.
High volume creates impossible tradeoffs.
More applications should mean better hires. Instead, they mean slower decisions. You're forced to choose:
- Spend hours doing thorough reviews (taking time away from your business)
- Make quick decisions with incomplete information (and risk missing the right person)
Qualified candidates get lost in the delay.
By the time you've reviewed everyone, your best candidates have moved on. You still don't know who's genuinely right for the role.
What is Hiring Lab?
A pilot program built with small business owners
Hiring Lab is Pier's pilot program where we develop and test hiring tools with people who run small businesses.
As a pilot partner, you:
- Get early access to SmartApply for your next hire
- Use it for one role during the pilot phase
- Share feedback through brief check-ins as you use the tool
- Help shape how SmartApply works for others like you
SmartApply reveals what makes each candidate uniquely qualified without requiring you to review AI-polished materials. It surfaces each person's actual experience, their specific approach to your role, and their authentic fit beyond resume polish.
You enter interviews knowing what makes each candidate potentially right for the role.
How SmartApply works
A clear 4-step flow for your next hire
No wasted interviews with mismatches. No qualified candidates lost in volume.
Role-specific apply link
Candidates apply through a role-specific link.
One role-specific question
They answer one role-specific question you set (revealing authentic thinking, not ChatGPT output).
Candidate Fit Reports
You review Candidate Fit Reports showing how each person's actual experience aligns with your role.
Interview or pass
You decide: interview or pass.
The outcome
What changes for you
- You bypass AI-polished materials and see authentic candidate signals: what each person has done, how they think about your role, what makes them uniquely qualified.
- You make faster decisions with complete information—every candidate gets a clear interview/pass decision based on role fit, not resume formatting.
- You enter interviews prepared with specific talking points about each candidate's potential fit.
- You focus on business operations instead of parsing identical-looking application materials.
You make every hiring decision. You just have complete candidate stories instead of AI-generated bullet points.
Who should join as a pilot partner
A fit for hands-on owners
- Handle hiring yourself (without dedicated HR support).
- Face high application volume where everyone looks qualified on paper.
- Need to understand what makes each candidate uniquely qualified.
- Want to enter interviews confident you're meeting the right people.
SmartApply works one role at a time during this pilot phase—use it where hiring quality matters most.
Hiring Lab
Join Hiring Lab as a pilot partner
Get early access to SmartApply. See what actually makes candidates qualified—not just what ChatGPT wrote for them.
Apply to join Hiring Lab.
