Skip to main content

Sick of your job? Pymetrics lets you play games to find your next career

If only finding your dream job were as easy as Pong. Well, Pymetrics, a young startup that launched in the fall of 2014, claims that may actually be true. Play a few games for about half an hour on Pymetrics’ website and the company’s algorithms will gauge your innate personal characteristics such as attention or motivation—and tell you what career you’re best suited for.

And then it will send your profile to potential employers looking for people like you.

As of today, Pymetrics has about 80,000 registered job candidates and a growing list of employers, which include Fidelity and search and talent strategy firm Egon Zehnder.

“Neuroscience has revolutionized our understanding of the brain,” the company’s website explains. “We apply this to helping people find their optimal career path, and help companies find ideal candidates.”

“If LinkedIn and Match.com could have a child, Pymetrics would be it.”

Pymetrics measures neither your IQ nor your knowledge of any subject matter, but rather assesses fifty key cognitive and emotional traits. Different professions require different personal qualities and that’s what their software evaluates, the company’s co-founder and CEO Frida Polli told Digital Trends.

That idea isn’t new—everyone knows that being an accountant requires different character traits than being a salesman. But Pymetrics’ games go beyond such common sense: They’re created based on decades of neuroscience research. Polli and co-founder/chief computer officer Julie Yoo combined their neuroscience and information technology expertise to identify game tasks that translate into character traits that interest recruiters.

After you play all the games, sophisticated data-science algorithms analyze your performance and create your cognitive and emotional profile—and your career profile as well. Pymetrics identifies what you are naturally best at, and matches it up with the career that requires it. The one you can fall in love with, in theory. If LinkedIn and Match.com could have a child, Pymetrics would be it.

Using technology to job-hunt by personal traits is only logical, says Polli. In an age when Amazon recommends your next unputdownable book and Netflix the next awesome movie, computer algorithms should suggest the next best candidate to a hiring manager and the next dream job to an applicant. The reason it’s not done on a larger scale, Polli says, is not because it’s too expensive or complicated, but because our career tools are outdated.

She cites the Myers-Briggs test—the personality indicator developed 75 years ago, which today is still used by employers to assess their employees’ behavioral characteristics—for example, introverts versus extroverts. To Polli, this is unacceptable. “Do you use a typewriter or any other 1940s technology in your life right now?” she asks rhetorically. “No. You shouldn’t be using anything that was developed so long ago.” And certainly not for something as important as your career.

Polli realized that job-hunting tools were outdated when she herself was trying to figure out her career options. As a student at Harvard Business School, and already with a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a few years of research down her belt, she was interested to see what professions she was best suited for. Yet, she couldn’t find any computer-based career-matching tools. “All they had was a questionnaire,” she recalls. “And I was, like, wow, this is so 20th century. This is not what we would do in a research lab to figure things out. Why are we doing it for career?”

Polli partnered up with Yoo, whom she had met a few years prior when they both worked as post-doctoral researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They set off to remedy the problem.

“Do you use a typewriter or any other 1940s technology in your life right now?”

First, they developed a prototype, then they looked for investors. A friend put Polli in touch with Khosla Ventures, known to invest in science projects. Khosla Ventures was interested and in the fall of 2014, Pymetrics launched. It has been building a list of employers and job hunters since.

To demonstrate how games work, Polli runs one of them. The rules are simple: If a green circle pops up on the screen, clap your hands; if a red one appears, don’t clap. The circles appear randomly and quickly, and most people probably clap a few times when they shouldn’t. That game, Polli says, shows how attentive you are. If you clapped on all green circles and none of the red ones, you’re very attentive. If you clapped on some red circles, it means you’re a bit impulsive.

But impulsivity isn’t a bad trait, Polli explains—except when taken to the extreme. “People who are impulsive tend to be more efficient,” she says, “because you really want to move the ball forward, not to consider every single detail.” People with such characteristics make better entrepreneurs and salesmen, she explains. (Her own Pymetrics profile fits the theme, she says—she can be a bit impulsive, but very efficient.)

On the contrary, professions such as accountant and software developer require a great level of attention, so if you got all your claps right, you’ll probably make a good coder. In another game, you have to read faces—look at a photograph and tell what the person is feeling based on their facial expression. For some professions, such as human resources, the ability to read faces quickly and correctly is super important. For others, not so.

The best part about Pymetrics is that there’s no way to do poorly on the games. Unlike SAT, GMAT, LSAT, and other tests, Pymetrics assessment simply reveals what you are naturally good at. And hopefully gaming brings some excitement to the daunting job search process. As Polli’s 9-year old daughter says, “They’re so much fun!”

Lina Zeldovich
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Lina Zeldovich lives in New York and writes about science, health, food and ecology. She has contributed to Newsweek…
Jeep Compass EV breaks cover—but will it come to the U.S.?
jeep compass ev us newjeepcompassfirsteditionhawaii  4

Jeep just pulled the wraps off the all-new Compass EV, and while it’s an exciting leap into the electric future, there's a catch—it might not make it to the U.S. anytime soon.
This is a brand new electric version of the Jeep Compass, and being built on Stellantis' STLA platform—the same architecture underpinning models like the Peugeot E-3008 and E-5008—it looks much slicker and packs a lot more inside than previous versions of the Compass.
Let’s start with what’s cool: the new Compass EV is packing up to 404 miles of range on a single charge, a 74 kWh battery, and fast-charging that gets you from 20% to 80% in about 30 minutes. Not bad for a compact SUV with Jeep's badge on the nose.
There are two versions: a front-wheel-drive model with 213 horsepower and a beefier all-wheel-drive version with 375 horsepower. That AWD setup isn’t just for looks—it can handle 20% inclines even without front traction, and comes with extra ground clearance and better off-road angles. In short, it’s still a Jeep.
The design's been refreshed too, and inside you’ll find the kind of tech and comfort you’d expect in a modern EV—sleek, smart, and ready for both city streets and dirt trails.
But here’s the thing: even though production starts soon in Italy, Jeep hasn’t said whether the Compass EV is coming to America. And the signs aren’t promising.
Plans to build it in Canada were recently put on hold, with production now delayed until at least early 2026. Some of that might have to do with possible U.S. tariffs on Canadian and Mexican vehicles—adding a layer of uncertainty to the whole rollout.
According to Kelley Blue Book, a Stellantis spokesperson confirmed that the company has “temporarily paused work on the next-generation Jeep Compass, including activities at” the Canadian plant that was originally meant to build the model. They added that Stellantis is “reassessing its product strategy in North America” to better match customer needs and demand for different powertrain options.
So while Europe and other markets are gearing up to get the Compass EV soon, American drivers might be left waiting—or miss out entirely.
That’s a shame, because on paper, this electric Jeep hits a lot of sweet spots. Let’s just hope it finds a way over here.

Read more
Charlie Cox singles out his least favorite Daredevil: Born Again episode
Charlie Cox in Daredevil: Born Again.

Daredevil: Born Again season 1 was largely reconceived after the 2023 actor and writer strikes. Dario Scardapane -- a veteran of The Punisher series on Netflix -- was brought in to be the new showrunner and he made a lot of changes to the series that were well-received. However, there's one episode that Scardapane didn't really change at all, and it happens to be the least favorite episode of Daredevil: Born Again's leading man, Charlie Cox.

During an appearance on The Playlist, Cox noted that he wasn't very fond of the season's fifth episode, "With Interest," which was a largely standalone episode that featured his character, Matt Murdock, in a bank during a hostage crisis.

Read more
Zoox recalls robotaxis after Las Vegas crash, citing software fix
zoox recall crash 1739252352 robotaxi side profile in dark mode

Amazon's self-driving vehicle unit, Zoox, has issued a voluntary safety recall after one of its autonomous vehicles was involved in a minor collision in Las Vegas. The incident, which occurred in April 2025, led the company to investigate and identify a software issue affecting how the robotaxi anticipates another vehicle’s path.
The recall, affecting 270 Zoox-built vehicles, was formally filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Zoox said the issue has already been addressed through a software update that was remotely deployed to its fleet.
Zoox’s robotaxis, which operate without driving controls like a steering wheel or pedals, are part of Amazon’s entry into the autonomous driving space. According to Zoox’s safety recall report, the vehicle failed to yield to oncoming traffic while making an unprotected left turn, leading to a low-speed collision with a regular passenger car. While damage was minor, the event raised flags about the system’s behavior in complex urban scenarios.
Establishing safety and reliability remain key factors in the deployment of the relatively new autonomous ride-hailing technology. Alphabet-owned Waymo continues to lead the sector in both safety and operational scale, with services active in multiple cities including Phoenix and San Francisco. But GM’s Cruise and Ford/VW-backed Argo AI were forced to abandon operations over the past few years.
Tesla is also expected to enter the robotaxi race with the launch of its own service in June 2025, leveraging its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software. While FSD has faced heavy regulatory scrutiny through last year, safety regulations are expected to loosen under the Trump administration.
Zoox, which Amazon acquired in 2020, says it issued the recall voluntarily as part of its commitment to safety. “It’s essential that we remain transparent about our processes and the collective decisions we make,” the company said in a statement.

Read more