Our Story

About us

For over 30 years we have been the change maker for a more soft skills driven work-life within talent acquisition, assessments and advisory.

We operate globally with customers from North America to Singapore with headquarters in Brighton, Stockholm and Helsinki.

At Clevry we have over 150 soft skills certified recruiters, business psychologists and experts at your service.

1991: Soft Skills in our DNA

Criterion Partnership was founded back in 1991 by Richard Hunter, who prior to this co-developed the OPQ at SHL. 

Dr. Alan Redman joined soon after as a partner and still heads up the science and technology team, with over 25 years expertise picked up from practicing as a Chartered, HCPC-Registered Psychologist. Alan specialises in fusing psychology and technology together to create amazing tools and candidate experiences. 

2004: Recruiters gone soft

In a small student apartment outside of Helsinki, 2704 kilometres from Brighton, a couple of students named Lucas Geisler and Tomas Valkama decided to change the recruitment industry. 

In the early days, almost every organisation on earth relied on hard skills as the only means of assessing and selecting potential employees. Why? Because it was quick and easy. 

Our founders thought this was the wrong approach...

Studentwork was focused on students and young graduates who lacked long CV's, but had the right abilities and traits to succeed in a role. We believe that people should be valued based on how they are as human beings (soft skills) and less on what's in their CV (hard skills).

Science clearly shows that soft skills are the best predictor of future job performance. The founders knew that success rates would go bananas (in a good way) if they could combine assessments, structured interviews and onboarding in an easy and human centric manner. They were right.

The pursuit of higher validity and predictability would , a few years later, take Lucas to Gatwick Airport to meet Dr. Alan Redman for the first time.