Skillist

Skillist connects community college students to in-demand jobs. By reinventing the traditional job application process, we can match students and employers based on what really matters – skills!

Skillist is an online job search platform built for America’s skilled workforce. There are millions of high-paying positions that require more than a high school diploma but less than a four-year degree. Commonly known as “middle-skill jobs”, these represent the largest and fastest-growing segment of the US labor market—and nearly 3 million middle-skill job openings go unfilled each year! There is no talent shortage either, as there are ~65 million people with an education beyond high school but no four-year college degree. The current system is broken, leaving companies and job-seekers unable to connect effectively. Skillist solves this problem by reinventing the job application process. Our platform focuses on the actual skills that candidates have and that companies want, leading to better outcomes for applicants and employers alike.

Employers struggle to find middle-skill talent, as an inability to accurately screen for candidate skills leads companies to rely on proxy qualifications like bachelor’s degrees and recognizable internships. This artificially limits applicant pools and diversity and biases towards poor-fit, overqualified candidates.

Meanwhile, community college students often struggle to access the middle-skill job market. Many come from challenging socio-economic circumstances, represent minority student groups, and have past academic/work experiences that, while skill-developing, are less easily mapped against traditional job descriptions and resumes. Consequently, students lack visibility into roles that are a good match, or they are overlooked for interview consideration.

Skillist bridges the middle-skill gap by empowering applicants and employers to communicate more transparently about the skillsets that they respectively possess and require. Operating as a job platform built exclusively for middle-skill job-seekers and employers, we create a unique value proposition for users: the best collection of job postings for graduates of community colleges, vocational programs, and bootcamps; and the largest aggregated marketplace of relevant talent for companies with high-need openings. Additionally, we believe that being the first job platform to track and match skills will have significant value as job titles and industries continue to evolve beyond traditionally-defined expectations.

Skillist serves community college students, who are twice as likely to be from the bottom socioeconomic quartile as from the top quartile and face systemic barriers to entering the middle-skill workforce. Skillist has designed a solution for these students. We enable students to quickly search and apply, through our mobile-friendly interface, for roles that fit their unique skillsets. We work with employers who have a vested interest in building a more inclusive talent pipeline, and we protect our applicants from bias through our identity-blind hiring system. Skillist is committed to democratizing access to the middle class.

Track "interview selection" of candidates through platform - 10,000 community college students getting hired by partner employers

Track sign-ups and active users (maintaining profile, searching, etc) on platform - 1 million users on platform

Track number of community colleges who sign partnership agreements - 500 community college partners

The status quo requires candidates to read job descriptions, infer employer preferences, and craft resumes that appropriately summarize their experiences. Skillist eliminates this back-and-forth by creating a common skill-based process. We plan to utilize natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning technology to build a “Skillist Engine” that can automate the process of translating employer job descriptions into skill lists, and also assist candidates in adding specific skills to their profiles based on past jobs they’ve had or courses they’ve taken.

Our solution is an online, scalable platform that increases job market connectivity in a sector where recruiting has remained largely ad-hoc. There are few dedicated job platforms for CC students or middle-skill roles. Instead, companies rely on recruiting agencies and career fairs to source candidates. Building a CC-focused job platform increases the reach of employers and gives CC students visibility into career opportunities. It has the additional benefit of being mobile-friendly, which makes it far easier for candidates to engage with and complete the job application process.

We will generate revenue by charging employers, but not students, for use of our platform. We opted for this structure because we believe that our product creates significant value for employers and because we do not want to students’ ability to pay to determine their access to opportunity. We will acquire students through community college partnerships and network-building efforts.

Though Skillist has a strong social mission, we have chosen to operate as a for-profit social enterprise rather than as a non-profit so that we can grow and scale sustainably.

We are currently bootstrapping our venture and have not yet taken any outside capital. However, as members of both the Harvard iLab Venture Incubation Program and the MassChallenge Accelerator, we have access to significant free and in-kind resources which we are utilizing to support and fuel our growth.

The biggest risk factors for Skillist will be: if we can acquire enough paying customers (companies) who are willing to try hiring from this new pool of untapped talent, and if we can get enough community college students to sign on and try our new application process. We hope that the pilot we are now conducting will provide us enough information in both regards.

https://www.facebook.com/SkillistCo/

We have spent the last year working on our idea, Skillist. We're now confident that we've identified a problem that human-centered technology has huge potential to solve. We're now looking to turn our idea into a reality, and actively seeking guidance and mentorship from experts and change-makers. We've been fortunate to have the support of organizations like MassChallenge and the Harvard i-lab-- but the know-how and expertise from the MIT SOLVE community would be transformational for us in taking the next step forward.

MassChallenge

Harvard i-lab

The Skillist team has been fortunate to assemble a great team of strategic advisors with a wealth of relevant experience.
● Anne Dwane - Entrepreneur-in-Residence, HBS; Co-Founder, GSV Acceleration Fund
● Joseph Fuller - Professor, HBS; Co-Chair, HBS/HGSE Middle Skills Gap Initiative
● Ross Gittell - Chancellor, New Hampshire Community College System

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