Italian Tech Firm Bending Spoons Rejects 99.96% of 800,000 Job Applicants Annually
Bending Spoons, a Milan-based technology company founded in 2013, has become one of the most selective employers worldwide, receiving 800,000 job applications last year but hiring only 286 people. This acceptance rate of approximately 0.04% is far lower than elite US universities and competitive organizations like NASA, highlighting the company's extreme rigor in talent acquisition.
The company, which went public on NASDAQ in July 2026 and reported $1.31 billion in revenue in 2025, operates unlike typical Silicon Valley startups. It has acquired 20 established software companies since 2018, including AOL, Evernote, and Vimeo, focusing on revitalizing these mature products rather than selling them for profit. Bending Spoons reinvests earnings to continue expanding its portfolio.
CEO Luca Ferrari described their hiring process as highly scientific, involving multiple filtering stages: from 800,000 applicants, 60,000 pass initial screening and take cognitive and judgment tests, then 3,300 are interviewed with carefully designed questions scored quantitatively and analyzed by algorithms. Only 286 candidates reach the final hiring stage. Ferrari emphasized that traditional interviews are unreliable, so the company uses data-driven methods to predict future employee performance, even evaluating candidates’ interpersonal behavior during interviews.
The company’s workforce of around 700 employees is mostly young professionals in their 20s and 30s, many in their first jobs, who are entrusted with significant responsibilities and professional guidance. Bending Spoons’ business model involves acquiring companies, extensively restructuring them with small, efficient teams who rewrite code and redesign products to meet high performance standards.
The founders, including Ferrari, initially started a failed AI-based calendar app but learned from that experience to build a company focused on acquiring proven products and removing luck from success. Ferrari admitted he himself might not pass the company’s stringent hiring process. The firm continuously refines its recruitment algorithms by tracking employee performance over time to improve predictive accuracy.
This exclusive insight into Bending Spoons’ hiring reveals an obsessive commitment to identifying talent and a unique corporate strategy blending old-school acquisition with cutting-edge data science.
