Why Curate Partners Says Trust is the Biggest ROI on Ropes

Curate Partners built its reputation on how it treats candidates and clients. Ropes helped them back that up with proof.

Since deploying Ropes at Curate Partners in January of 2026:

• Significant increase in interviews turning into placements
• Faster screening, with no more waiting days for a technical screener to free up
• Proxies, invisible overlays and AI-assisted cheating caught before candidates reach a client
• Assessment videos and PDF results shared directly with hiring managers

“When we send over a candidate vetted by Ropes, we feel very strong.” -- Mike Giglio, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Curate Partners

About Curate Partners

Curate Partners is a staffing and consulting firm based in Woburn, Massachusetts. They focus on data, customer experience and AI transformation. Their consulting team can join a project at any stage and take it from strategy and roadmap through delivery.

Mike Giglio and his co-founders started Curate after working at a much larger firm, looking to make a change in the industry. “We try to treat our consultants as if they were our internal employees,” says Mike. That care for candidates and clients shows up in every step, from the first conversation through placement and follow-up.

A strong process that couldn’t move fast enough

Curate’s screening was already thorough. Recruiters ran long-form interviews with every candidate. Then technical experts ran technical screens.

“It was good,” says Mike. “It’s just that we couldn’t hire enough people to do it.”

Screeners only had so much time. A backlog would build, and some candidates waited two, three, even four days to get screened. In staffing, that’s a long time.

“As everybody knows in this business, time kills all deals,” says Mike.

There was a second issue. Curate’s technical screeners were experts at judging skills. But spotting fraud is a different job, and it was getting harder every year.

“We were asking a lot of them,” says Mike. “They could do the technical vetting. But fraud was the hardest part, because they’re not used to doing that day to day.”

How fraud has changed

Mike has been in staffing for 23 years. Fraud used to look different. Someone would show up on day one and not be the person who interviewed a week earlier. Interviews were face to face, so managers had a better chance to notice.

Now nearly everything happens over video. Curate only screens candidates on video so they can at least see them. But the tricks have grown.

“Now they have people standing next to them that aren’t on camera answering the questions,” says Mike. “They have somebody else typing for them, and it just looks like they’re typing. They’re looking at a phone above the computer that we can’t see.”

Nathaniel White, Vice President of Recruiting at Curate, says AI has sped all of this up. “AI changes by the day,” he says. “The deepfakes. People taking a screenshot of a coding test and pulling in the answers on the side while they take it. It's wild.”

Why Ropes

Curate heard about Ropes through an industry colleague. The team saw a way to add to what their recruiters and screeners were already doing.

Ropes adds checks that go beyond what a screening call can show. “Catching people using proxies or invisible overlays,” says Nathaniel. “There are so many different tools within Ropes that help us make sure we’re working with genuine candidates.”

For Nathaniel, the goal was bigger than any one feature. Curate wanted to stand behind every candidate they sent.

“We wanted to be able to really put our neck on the line to all of our customers,” he says. “To show we’re going to the most extreme lengths we can to make sure everyone we present is a solid, vetted, tested, genuine candidate.”

The moment it worked

Nathaniel knew Ropes was working once the team started using it heavily. They saw how many candidates came back flagged, then dug into how and why.

“A lot of candidates are very reliant on AI and LLMs to get the answer for them,” he says. “So it really started to weed out the people that are actually hands-on and able to do the work themselves.”

The results

Since bringing in Ropes, Curate has seen a significant uplift in their interview-to-placement rate.

Ropes also works before a candidate ever takes the test. People who embellished their experience often don’t start the assessment at all. The ones who try to fake it almost always get caught.

“It’s maybe a lot of extra work,” says Nathaniel. “But it’s worth it for us to protect our good name.”

Mike sees it in the quality of who gets placed. Finding the right candidate can take a bit longer, since more people get filtered out. But the people Curate sends are stronger, and recruiters feel confident about every one.

What clients see

Fraud is on every hiring manager’s mind right now. They want to know their staffing partner has an answer.

“You have to have a solution,” says Mike. “We can easily talk about Ropes, and they’re like, ‘Good, great, you guys have got that covered,’ because they’re having the same problems we’re having.”

Showing beats telling. Curate shares the assessment videos and PDF results with hiring managers. “They’re blown away by it,” says Mike.

Nathaniel says showing clients the work is now part of every conversation. “We make sure they know how much work goes into finding a candidate before it even gets to their plate,” he says. Sharing a candidate’s video also gives a manager a preview of what the interview will look like.

Trust is the real return

When asked where Curate gets the most value from Ropes, Nathaniel didn’t name a feature.

“Trust,” he says. “The trust that’s been built and earned with current managers and new clients. That has been the best ROI from implementing it.”

Working with the Ropes team

Both Mike and Nathaniel pointed to how fast the Ropes team responds.

“When we have a problem, when we have a question, you guys are on it,” says Mike. “We’re not putting in a ticket. We’re not waiting around for the process. We just message you and you respond. That, to me, is worth a lot.”

“It actually feels like you guys are part of our team,” says Nathaniel. “It feels like we’re reaching out to a different department. Everything we want to change, you listen and either help us change it or tweak it to something that works.”

Looking ahead

The industry keeps changing, and fraud keeps changing with it. Curate plans to keep raising the bar.

“If you’re not doing something like this, you’re gonna be behind,” says Mike.