Bordeaux · Brunswick · wherever the work needs doing
I’m Johnathen Evans-Guilbault. I lead HR work, found and run Open HR, and write novels. This site is a living record of all three.
Career
A consistent through-line: classification, compensation, organizational design, and HR systems. Reverse chronological — newest first.
Nov 2025 — present
Bordeaux, France
Open HR · SASU · Bordeaux
Building an HR-technology platform (RefScore / ProScore) that algorithmically scores employment references using I-O psychology and psychometric methods. Leading all technical and commercial operations toward a 2026 launch across EU, UK, and US.
Jun 2023 — Oct 2024
Fairfax, Virginia
ASM Research, LLC · an Accenture Federal company · IRS contract
Led a ten-person HR team delivering talent-management services across 27 business units and 90,000+ employees in eight states, on a $245M contract with the Internal Revenue Service.
Nov 2020 — Dec 2024
Brunswick, Georgia
SopHRa, LLC · HR-tech startup
Founded an HR-technology startup focused on AI-assisted job analysis and compensation management. Led product strategy from concept to alpha in four months. Validated product–market fit for AI-powered HR tools through enterprise client research.
Jan 2023 — Jun 2023
Salem, Oregon
Oregon Health Authority
Compensation redesign and Workday HCM implementation across a state agency.
Sep 2021 — Jul 2022
Washington, D.C.
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development · Office of Inspector General
Agency-wide classification policy and a restructure projecting $5M annual savings.
Nov 2019 — Sep 2021
Savannah, Georgia
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers · Civilian Human Resources Agency
Multi-disciplinary classification team spanning the full GS-1 through GS-15 range.
Apr 2013 — Nov 2019
Brunswick, Georgia
U.S. Department of Homeland Security · Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers
Entry point into the field. Six years of compounding specialization across classification, recruitment, and HRIS.
Selected work
A short list of engagements where the deliverable shipped, the metric moved, or the artifact still lives in the organization.
Classification
2023–2024
ASM Research / Internal Revenue Service
Led a ten-person classification team through a bulk-review cycle across 27 business units. Built an occupational-series logic table and classification criteria that kept throughput consistent across reviewers.
Policy
2021–2022
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, OIG
Designed a new organizational structure using Excel and PowerBI modeling. Drafted the agency-wide classification policy that accompanied it. Built the financial model that sustained scrutiny at the leadership level.
HR Systems
2013–2019
DHS / Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers
$250K implementation delivered with 99% user adoption. Subsequent automation of the classification process for 1,264 positions cut evaluation time by 87%.
Policy
2024
Consulting engagement
Authored a complete employment policy suite (performance, remote work, unlimited PTO, compassionate leave, discipline and grievances, equity framework, global mobility, recognition / bonus), a job-family framework and compensation methodology, and a recruitment competency framework with scoring matrix and interview guide.
Product
2025–present
Founder & President
An HR-technology platform applying psychometric methods to employment references and professional scoring. Built on a Go backend, React web, Kotlin Android, Swift iOS, MongoDB. Launching 2026 across EU, UK, and US.
Compensation
2023
Oregon Health Authority
Led compensation redesign for 18,000+ employees across nine job families, benchmarked against Mercer, Radford, and Willis Towers Watson. Served as Workday HCM SME during a twelve-month implementation.
Employment references are the oldest signal in hiring and the worst-measured. HR software has modernized almost everything about the process — except the part where we ask people who have actually worked with a candidate what it was like.
RefScore
Multi-source reference scoring grounded in I-O psychology. Weights references by confidence, applies decay for older relationships, produces an adverse-impact-defensible composite.
ProScore
A professional-scoring companion: self-report and behavioral assessment data validated cross-culturally (D/S-loading measurement).
Compliance: GDPR, DORA. EU-hosted.
Launch: 2026 — EU, UK, US.
Stack: Go, React, Kotlin, Swift, MongoDB.
Writing
I write fiction outside of HR work. Influenced by Charles Frazier, John Steinbeck, and TJ Klune — writers who take people seriously and trust the reader to stay with long sentences.
Published
Savannah, Georgia Colony, 1740. Thomas Hendricks returns from war with steady hands and a rule he has kept since boyhood: don’t look, don’t want, don’t reach. Then William Ashford looks at him across a candlelit schoolroom, and the rule breaks. A sweeping work of literary historical fiction about a blacksmith, a tailor, and a tavern keeper building a household out of necessity, affection, and the stubborn refusal to disappear — in a colony where their love is a hanging offence.
Find on Amazon
Published · Book One in the Love Is… series
When an ambitious rookie cop with caretaker tendencies meets a fiercely independent blind law student, neither expects to find the relationship that will challenge them both to grow beyond their limitations. Set in Knoxville, Tennessee, Love Is Blind is a moving story about resilience, identity, and the courage to support without controlling — about the delicate balance between independence and connection, and the path that lets both flourish at once.
Find on AmazonReferences, scored
Most reference checks are free-text and unvalidated. Open HR’s RefScore applies I-O psychology to multi-source references and produces a composite, percentile, and dimension breakdown — defensible against adverse-impact scrutiny.
The card below is a live snapshot of my own RefScore, pulled from the platform.
RefScore Snapshot
Johnathen Evans-Guilbault
As of
2026-04-28
How to read this
Composite
56.5
T-score · μ50 σ10
Occupation
Human resource managers
ISCO-08 · 1212
References
1
Good confidence · 80%
Calculated
2026-03-25
last reference completion
Top 5 strengths
#1
Stress Tolerance
100.0
#2
Self-Control
100.0
#3
Innovation
100.0
#4
Social Orientation
100.0
#5
Leadership
100.0
Dimension breakdown
Work styles · O*NET
Big Five · HEXACO
Issued by did:web:open-hr.work · Ed25519 signed
About RefScore →Snapshot pulled 2026-04-28from Open HR’s production database. Anonymized — no referee names, no qualitative comments, no PII. RefScore composite is a normative T-score (population mean = 50, σ = 10); percentile is the standard normal CDF.
Contact
Available for HR consulting, fractional leadership, classification or compensation engagements, and Open HR partnership conversations.