We recently connected with Matt Schalsey and have shared our conversation below.

Matt, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

I had this idea as a side hustle to help optimize what questions were being asked in interviews. We had a widget concept and the prototype ready to go then it happened. My full time job had eliminated my role. There I was now my side hustle needed to be my main hustle. No funding, not much reserve but enough of an idea to keep the momentum.

I eventually landed some contract roles to assist companies on a temporary basis while using those fund to not only support my livelihood but also to support my new venture. I had no idea where or how I was going to survive but I knew this was is what I needed to be doing.

I surrounded myself by several great mentors and amazing people that wanted to help me and see our success. That’s when it happened we merged with a team with a little funding (that we weren’t going to use) but knew they were also supported and had more engineering resources. From that moment in a quick short 10 weeks, both our teams pushed fast for our official launch October 20th.

After nearly 2 1/2 years in development and countless times of throwing in the towel, we have signed our first two paying clients on day one.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

urning Hiring Chaos into Clarity: The Story of PerfectHire

PerfectHire was founded on a simple truth: hiring is still broken.

Recruiters spend more time managing systems than connecting with people. Candidate experiences are fragmented. Leaders lack the visibility to make smart, fast decisions. The tools built to help have only made things more chaotic.

PerfectHire exists to change that.

Built by recruiters, for recruiters, PerfectHire is a Talent Management Platform that unifies recruiting, scheduling, and workforce intelligence – finally transforming a decades-old ATS model into something modern, predictive, and human-centered.

At the heart of the platform is PerfectHire ATS+, a next-generation system that helps hiring teams:
• Identify and engage top candidates faster
• Cut hiring timelines by 30–50%
• Turn messy recruiting data into predictive, actionable insight

Unlike traditional systems that stop at the hire, PerfectHire connects the entire hiring lifecycle to business outcomes – from better candidate experiences to smarter workforce planning and reduced turnover.

What sets PerfectHire apart is its philosophy: we don’t believe AI replaces recruiters – it amplifies them. Every feature is designed to remove friction and free up recruiters to do the work that matters most – building relationships, not managing workflows.

PerfectHire’s team is made up of operators who have lived the recruiting chaos firsthand. That’s why the company’s mission is so personal: to end the duct-tape approach to hiring and deliver real clarity to the people behind the process.

In just a short time, PerfectHire has already helped forward-thinking Heads of Talent and CHROs modernize their hiring infrastructure, dramatically improve candidate experiences, and bring predictability back to frontline recruiting.

PerfectHire isn’t just another ATS.
It’s hiring, rewired for results.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Like most great startups, PerfectHire started with a mix of frustration, timing, and the right people finding each other.

Ben was literally the guy next door – my backyard neighbor who also happened to be an incredible engineer. What started as casual chats over the fence about tech and broken hiring systems turned into late-night whiteboard sessions and the first lines of code that became PerfectHire.

Nick was my recruiter in a previous role — the one who helped give me a shot when I was still figuring out my place in the tech/saas world. He’s the kind of leader who doesn’t just manage, he mentors. We’d both seen the same dysfunction in hiring tech from different angles, and we knew there had to be a better way.

And then there’s Max — a mutual introduction that turned into an instant connection. From the first conversation, it was clear we shared the same obsession: ending the chaos in recruiting and building something that actually worked for the people doing the hiring.

Each of us came from different disciplines — product, recruiting, engineering, and operations — but we were united by one thing: we’d all lived the problem. PerfectHire came together because we were tired of talking about how broken hiring was and finally decided to fix it.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Resilience, for me, didn’t come from a single moment – it’s been built over years of learning how to keep building even when the odds weren’t in my favor.

As an LGBTQ founder growing a company out of Nebraska, I learned early that the typical startup playbook wasn’t written for people like me – or for founders outside the major tech hubs. Access to funding, mentorship, and networks was limited, so I had to create my own path. That meant reaching beyond my geography to build global relationships, knocking on doors that weren’t always open, and proving that great innovation can come from anywhere – even the Midwest.

When I lost my job before launching PerfectHire, it forced a hard reset. I didn’t have the safety net or endless capital that most founders start with. What I did have was a clear vision and an unshakable belief that hiring could be fixed – that we could turn chaos into clarity.

So we got scrappy. Every decision had to be strategic. Every dollar had to stretch. We built in stages, validated fast, and stayed agile – not because it was trendy, but because survival required it.

Those early challenges didn’t just test my resilience – they defined it. They taught me that building something meaningful isn’t about where you start or who funds you. It’s about persistence, creativity, and the conviction to keep showing up, even when no one’s watching yet.

That’s the same energy we’ve built into PerfectHire: grit, clarity, and the belief that with the right system, people can rise above chaos and build something extraordinary.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.getperfecthire.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.perfect.hire/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-schalsey