Updates

Today, we’re making influence visible - giving teams a clearer way to understand how someone might shape the work around them, before they’re even hired.

Most hiring tools focus on traits, personality types or fit scores, but real teams aren’t built on static labels. They’re shaped by patterns of how people act, adapt, and interact in context. Until now, that kind of influence has been invisible, or left to gut feel.

Protu now surfaces Influence patterns: insight into how a candidate might support, enable, optimise, or supercharge the teams around them. These patterns are grounded in the context of each candidate’s strongest traits - preserving nuance instead of reducing people to averages. With so many possible combinations, it’s rare for two candidates to generate the same profile.

Over time, these insights will evolve into a clearer, more actionable layer - including team-level views and more intuitive summaries of how patterns show up.

What’s New

Insight through contribution styles

See how each candidate is likely to shape collaboration, momentum, and decision-making - based on how their behaviours typically show up in teams.

Framed by traits, not labels

Influence is mapped around a candidate’s strongest traits, showing how they contribute in the ways most natural to them.

Shared insight

Candidates and employers see the same influence data, framed appropriately for each. This shared context reduces misalignment - so conversations aren’t based on assumptions, but on aligned insight.

More than scores

Each pattern is generated by interpreting over 100 behavioural characteristics - revealing how someone’s unique contribution style may show up and influence the people around them.

We’ve designed Influence patterns to be glanceable, explainable, and structured to evolve as we learn from more roles, teams, and hiring outcomes.

This is another step away from flat scores, and toward a system that reflects how people actually show up, and shape the teams they join.

We’ve spoken to hundreds of candidates over the past few years - from new grads to experienced professionals, across industries and geographies. The message is consistent:

“I just want to understand what the role actually is - and be seen for how I could contribute.”

Most candidates aren’t trying to game the system. They’re trying to find somewhere they’ll matter - a role that fits, a team they can contribute to, and work they can grow in. But the process rarely helps them do that. Job descriptions feel vague or inflated. Application filters miss context. Interviews often reward performance under pressure instead of surfacing real potential.

It’s no surprise that even the strongest candidates feel cautious, confused, or unseen. Not because they lack skill - but because they’ve been left guessing.

• Guessing what the role really needs.
• Guessing what version of themselves to present.
• Guessing whether the role they walk into will be the one they were sold.

What candidates actually want is simple - but rarely offered: a fair and equal view of themselves and the company. A conversation, not a performance. A process that helps them reflect, respond, and express who they are - not who they think the company wants them to be.

They don’t want a long page report. They want something designed for them - a resource they can use. Not a verdict, but a tool that helps them think clearly, understand their strengths, and tell their story in their own words - even if the outcome isn’t a job.

They don’t want archetypes, modes, or labels. They want insight that creates reflection and prompts thought.

We designed Protu to give candidates that kind of experience. One that builds clarity before the interview even begins - not after it’s too late.

The insights candidates receive are the same ones employers see. They’re not personality scores or profile types. They’re grounded, accessible insights that help someone make sense of how they work - and how that might shape a team.

Because when both sides are working from the same source of truth, they’re not guessing anymore. They’re having a real conversation - even if it doesn’t lead to a hire, it leads to something else: honesty, insight, and the feeling that your time meant something.

Before we designed a layout or wrote a line of code, we spent two years trying to answer a harder question:

What actually makes someone valuable to a team?

Not in abstract terms. Not in frameworks. But in the day-to-day reality of how people show up, adapt, and influence the work around them.

We didn’t start with templates or personality models. We started with theory and contradiction.

Most systems are quick to categorise. OCEAN, MBTI, colour types, value charts. Easy to name, harder to act on. Especially when real teams are shaped by context, not fixed traits. Instead of wrapping these models in new packaging, we built something deeper.

We took an eclectic approach - drawing from behavioural science, organisational psychology, workplace theory, socioeconomics, and cultural dynamics to name a few. We mapped how influence travels. Where friction tends to show up. How trust is built or broken in small moments.

We took this insight and tested it rigorously against hiring decisions, and kept only what helped people understand each other better.

Some ideas didn’t translate. Some looked useful but weren’t. Over time, we shaped those into a wider system.

Many tools aim to sound intelligent. We focused on building something that learns - because everything about work is dynamic.

We needed something that could hold complexity without flattening it. A system that interprets traits in context, surfaces influence as something emergent, and reflects how people actually contribute - not just how they describe themselves.

You might not notice the theory at first. That’s by design.

Behind every Protu insight are over 100 behavioural indicators, modelled and refined through real-world hiring. The system runs in the background - translating behaviour into insight teams can actually use. How someone shapes clarity, momentum, cohesion - or friction.

We combine evidence-based theory with machine learning to move from experimental models to production-ready intelligence.

So we built a system where:

• Traits are interpreted in context, not isolation
• Influence is emergent, not fixed
• Contribution is framed through real team dynamics, not assumptions
• We don't categorise on skills, 'fit', or value mapping

Because insight without rigour isn’t insight. It’s decoration.

We’re still improving - especially in how influence patterns show up across roles, teams, and decisions. But the system gets sharper with every hire, every team or every contradiction it has to resolve.

Today, we’re launching Protu - a more intelligent way to build teams. One that helps you make better decisions, not just faster ones. It starts with conversation and ends in insight you can and candidates can actually use.

Most hiring systems were never built to understand people. Job descriptions rarely match the real work. Interviews are designed to eliminate, not learn. Talent gets reduced to keywords and credentials.

We’ve experienced the noise ourselves - as candidates trying to decode vague job specs, and as founders reading between the lines of polished CVs and rehearsed interviews. So we started over. Not by tweaking the old system - but by redesigning the foundation.

We wanted to rebuild it around people. So we asked:

• What if we stopped shaping people to fit roles - and shaped roles to fit people?
• What if interviews weren’t pressure tests, but insight conversations?
• What if teams were built to amplify difference - not flatten it?

Protu helps you define roles through guided conversation, explore candidates through real behavioural insight, and make hiring decisions based on how people actually work.

We designed Protu to reduce noise and bring clarity:

• You don’t write job specs → you build roles through structured conversation.
• You don’t filter for sameness → you make sense of difference.
• You don’t search for keywords → you explore real contribution styles.
• You’re backed by insight → not just instinct.

Candidates see their impact and influence before the interview even begins. And hiring decisions feel less like guessing, and more like building a team on purpose.

Visually, we’ve kept the product intentionally quiet. Minimal UI, dark backgrounds, clear data. Designed to frame insight - not add to the noise, especially when the decisions matter.

Protu evolves with every hire. You’re not just filling roles, you’re building intelligence unique to your company. Over time, it gets better at recognising what works in your culture, and why.

We’ve been working toward this for years. Today, we’re finally sharing it.

If you’re hiring or building a team, and this sounds like something you want to be a part of, Get in touch with us or explore our About us page to learn more.

More updates coming soon.