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HatAlign
The judgment of a great recruiter, without the agency

300 applicants, one role. Here's who matters, and why.

Know who's worth your time.

Alignment Explorer is for founders hiring specialized roles without a recruiter. Bring your applicants or let it find people, and get a ranked shortlist where every candidate comes with the reasoning behind it: why they fit, where the risks are, and what to check before you talk.

Upload your applicantsSee how it works

No seats. No minimums. No demo required.

MR
Maya R.
FOUNDING ENGINEER · APPLIED AI
Top priority

Applied AI engineer with 4 years shipping LLM systems in healthcare. Built evaluation pipelines end-to-end, from data collection to production deployment. Strong systems instinct, lighter on customer-facing work.

Why this candidate
  • Shipped production LLM evaluation pipelines at a Series-B health-AI startup.
  • Maps to your real need: applied AI plus systems, not research alone.
Risks & gaps
  • No evidence of customer-facing or implementation work. Verify if this is the integrations role.
What to check
  • Papers show research; production scale is unconfirmed. Ask for a system she took to prod.
Role fit8.6
High confidence
Engagement7.2
Medium confidence
AvailabilityUnclear
Low signal · flagged
Evidence6.9
Medium confidence
Sample candidate
242
applications on the average open role today, and climbing
11,000
applications submitted on LinkedIn every minute, up 45% in a year
37%
of employers still trust a resume at face value, now that everything reads as polished
Why now

Every resume looks strong now.

AI writes a flawless application in seconds, so the pile keeps growing and every candidate reads like a fit. The signal is still in there. It just takes someone who knows the work to tell it from the noise, and that's rarely the founder, the agency, or the recruiter. Alignment Explorer reads each profile the way a domain expert would, weighs how much is proven versus self-claimed, and shows you what to confirm in the room.

The alternative

The honest alternative used to be a $30,000 agency.

When the hire matters, founders hand it to a specialist recruiter and pay 15 to 30 percent of first-year salary. Alignment Explorer gives you the same judgment, a curated shortlist with the reasoning behind it, transparently and self-serve, for a fraction of the cost. You keep control of the pitch and the relationship.

A specialist agency
$18k–$44k per hire · weeks to a shortlist · opaque sourcing · paid on their placement, not your fit.
A startup job board
Free–$250/mo · gets you the pile fast and cheap · but the judging is still all on you, and titles mislead.
Alignment Explorer
A reasoned shortlist in minutes · every call explained · works on your applicants or finds people · a fraction of one placement.
What you get

A decision, not a longer list.

The point: spend your few interviews on the right people, skip the mis-hire that costs a quarter of runway, and be able to show a cofounder or board exactly why you chose them.

Decisions, not lists

Spend your few interviews on the right people.

Every candidate arrives as a reasoned case, with why they fit and where they don't, not a row in a spreadsheet you still have to read. So the choice is one you can put in front of a cofounder or board and defend.

Knows what to check

Avoid a mis-hire that costs you a quarter of runway.

It flags what to verify and what to watch for, so your few interviews land on the right questions and nothing blindsides you later.

Works on any source

Show exactly why you chose them.

The same judgment whether you bring a pile of 300 applicants or ask it to find people for you. Signal in, noise out. One consistent standard, not a different bar per channel.

How it works

Two ways in. One reasoned shortlist.

01

Bring applicants, or describe a role

Upload the people who applied, in bulk or one by one, to triage the flood. Or describe the role and let it find people who never applied.

Triage applicantsDiscover candidates
02

Read decision-ready cards

Each candidate comes with the why, the risks, and what to check, scored on the same signals. Compare side by side without rereading a single resume.

03

Reach out with evidence

Open a conversation with a note grounded in what you actually saw. You make the pitch, because no one sells your company better than you.

Learn more about how it works →
Where it fits

It does the judging. You keep the pitch.

Alignment Explorer is not an agency, an ATS, or a job board. It equips the parts of hiring where founders get stuck, and stays out of the parts only you should own.

  • 1Define the roleHelps
  • 2Get it in front of peopleYours
  • 3Triage & find candidatesCore
  • 4Screen with judgmentCore
  • 5Interview the right questionsHelps
  • 6Check referencesYours
  • 7Pitch & closeYours
Alignment Explorer does thisYou do this
Why trust the judgment

It shows you where it's sure, and where it isn't.

Other tools hand you a confident score because it demos well. Alignment Explorer reads every candidate across four signals and tells you where the read is soft, because you're betting your company on this hire.

Role fit
How the evidence maps to what the role actually needs
High
Engagement
Signs they'd be open to a conversation right now
Medium
Availability
Whether a move looks likely, and when it doesn't
Unclear · flagged
Evidence confidence
How much of the read is verified versus inferred
Medium

Built by someone who's done the hiring.

The reasoning isn't a black box. It draws on research into verifying claims against a body of knowledge, the same instinct now applied to checking who's actually a fit.

PS
Prashant Shiralkar
Hiring manager at Amazon and Qualtrics, with hundreds of interviews and teams built from scratch. PhD in AI, with over a decade in GenAI, information extraction, semantic search, and ranking.
Who it's for

Built for your first specialized hires.

The roles where the title is misleading and a mis-hire costs months of runway. Funded teams hiring without a recruiter, where the founder is still the one reading every profile.

your first robotics engineeryour first ML hireyour first avionics-software engineeryour first applied-AI engineer

See your shortlist before your next interview.

Upload your applicantsDescribe a role

Transparent pricing · no seats or minimums · candidates treated with clarity and respect.