TrueAbility of San Antonio made it to the finals of the South by Southwest Interactive’s Accelerator in the New Web Technologies category.
TrueAbility helps companies hire the best technical talent by assessing a job candidate’s technical skills in a live server environment. The company shortnes a company’s recruiting process and makes it easier and cheaper to hire great technical talent.
Luke Owen, co-founder and CEO, pitched the company in less than five minutes in front of a panel of judges Tuesday afternoon. Marcus Robertson, co-founder and chief technology officer, is also at the show.
At the end of his presentation, Owen fielded a lot of questions from the judges asking about whether the company would partner with universities doing Massive Open Online Courses, known as MOOCs, to certify students’ skills.
Bob Metcafle, one of the judges, mentioned he was taking a MOOC course in Python programming from MIT and he wanted to use TrueAbility’s testing to certify his skills at the end of the course.
Owen said universities have approached the company about partnerships but it is laser focused right now on helping companies hire the best information technology workers for their organizations.
TrueAbility faces three other competitors in the finals. They include Memoto, a company form Stockholm, Sweden, that makes a tiny wearable camera that automatically captures a person’s life in still photos. It’s also searchable and shareable through its smartphone apps. The other finalist is Wanderu from Boston. They company is a new travel startup that provides a simple way to find and book bus and train travel from Point A to Point B.
Rackspace Hosting sponsored the accelerator. The finalists will be announced tonight at 6 p.m. at SXSW Interactive.

Disclosure: TrueAbility is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News