Smarterer, a Boston based web startup looking to reinvent the skills section of the resume, was in the news the beginning of April raising a $1.25 million financing round. At that time, California based True Ventures and several Angel investors including Boston’s Dharmesh Shah (HubSpot founder), Nicole Stata (runs Boston Seed Capital) and Joe Caruso (active startup Angel/advisor/mentor) were included in the announcement.

However, one last (and big) investor was left out at the time — Google Ventures. After launching into public beta yesterday and introducing its skills measurement platform to a big crowd at Web Innovator’s Group, Smarterer formally announced Google Ventures’ involvement in the round early this morning.

Smarterer is one of just a handful of Boston area startups in Google Ventures’ portfolio, including:

• English Central, a company that makes learning English fun by leveraging popular online videos;
• Recorded Future, an analytics company focused on using current info on the web to predict the future;
• SCVNGR, a company working to build a game layer on top of the physical world;
• HubSpot, a company providing online marketing software to SMBs;
• Relay Rides, peer-to-peer car sharing service (while being founded here in Boston, they have since moved headquarters to San Francisco);
• Adimab, an antibody discovery and exploration platform (they are actually based in New Hampshire).

Smarterer adds another analytics focused company to Google Ventures’ portfolio. Originally conceived and funded by BzzAgent founder and CEO Dave Balter (just recently acquired by Tesco’s dunnhumby for $60M), it aims to test and score people on their digital, social and technical skills. The company has built a platform that measures skills that currently just sit as words at the base of the resume, and yet are more often than not critical to a person’s ability to rock-n-roll or sputter-n-fizzle in a new job.

Smarterer’s co-founder and CEO Jennifer Fremont-Smith explained in an interview with BostInno last week, “The skills section is important on the resume, but it’s unused. It is usually totally meaningless and exaggerated. We’re giving people the tools to validate they have the skills and articulate that to the world.”

Take an online marketer as an example. You need to know everything from Google Analytics and AdWords to Omniture and SEO. On Smarterer, you can take a quick 10 question, 60 second multiple choice test within that discipline, validate your proficiency with a score (and descriptors like “smart”, “smarter”, and “smarterer”), and then actively share that openly with the world.

“The world is moving to becoming more data-centric in areas of development, marketing and recruiting,” said Rich Miner, Google Ventures Partner and co-founder of Android. “Google Ventures is passionate about companies that use data and analytics to solve hard impactful problems. Smarterer has done just that by creating a simple approach to test and socially share your depth of professional knowledge. I’m a 590 in Excel, and that was one-handed from my Android phone.”

In speaking with Fremont-Smith last week, we learned a few other important points in the company’s model:

• Smarterer plans to crowd source both its tests and the questions that make up those tests.
• The scoring algorithm is similar to Glicko, the system used to rank and match chess masters. On Smarterer, after quickly identifying someone’s skill level on a test, the system then adapts questions for their level. The result is that the whole system gets “smarterer” at identifying your skill level as more tests are taken amont the full community of users.
• After taking tests, Smarterer encourages you to boast your level by sharing an embeddable badge anywhere on the web to express to the world what you’re good at.

You can dive right in and sign up for the service here. Currently you can choose from around 70 tests, ranging from everything from Fourquare and SurveyMonkey to HTML5 and Photoshop. Want to be “smarterer”? Just know you’ll have to make it into the top 5% in any given test.

In mid April, Fremont-Smith contributed an article as part of a featured series authored by area thought leaders on the topic of hiring, where you can read more about her vision: “The Future of Hiring: What’s Your Skills RBI?“