Jobversity: An UpwardlyGlobal Initiative

Education levels of immigrants worldwide are on the rise. Yet host countries struggle to facilitate socioeconomic integration resulting in three interrelated problems. 1. Jobseekers, eager to put their talent to work languish in low-skill jobs (brain waste). 2. Employers miss out on talent and the bottom line boosts a diverse workforce brings. 3. Communities lose out on tax receipts and the vitality newcomers bring.  

Jobversity offers a solution to this three-fold problem with an upstream, mobile SaaS microlearning platform. Jobseekers learn how to navigate the US job market and coaches learn how to support skilled newcomers. Jobversity has proof of concept based on two years of distribution to community colleges, nonprofits, and state agencies. We believe that the Jobversity model, when adapted to local contexts, can provide valuable information and guidance that will enable effective integration of skilled newcomers.

Problem to Solve: We are applying under the “Good Jobs and Inclusive Entrepreneurship” challenge and our initiative is positioned to solve the challenges of equipping workers with technological and digital literacy as well as the durable skills needed to stay apace with the changing job market and economic downturns. 

Scale: We have more people on the move today than in any moment in human history. With education and skill-levels of immigrants on the rise worldwide, they seek better jobs, improved standards of living and, thus, a more secure future for themselves and their families. Despite the need for skilled labor and the benefits to local economies, countries struggle with socioeconomic integration. For example, in the US, 2M immigrants and refugees are college-educated and have in-demand skills and work experience, yet languish in unemployment or underemployment. 

Factors: Newcomers will always face cultural and systemic barriers to professional workforce integration. This includes limited language proficiency, employer bias and misinformation around foreign-earned credentials and experience, and lack of culturally-specific soft skills. Within the new context created by COVID-19, this community faces additional hurdles, now competing with native-born candidates for fewer jobs in an exceptionally challenging job market.

Jobversity is an initiative of Upwardly Global, a national nonprofit serving skilled immigrants since 2000. Launched in 2018, Jobversity offers digital learning products using a SaaS model. Our content includes more than 50 microlearning courses for job seekers and three created for workforce professionals. For job seekers, the content provides valuable lessons in the soft or essential skills necessary to navigate the professional workplace – from networking to hiring. For workforce professionals, our learning pathway provides guidance on working effectively with skilled immigrants and refugees.  

All content is housed on our custom LMS, hosted by Appinium, with our dedicated Jobversity team providing Account Management and technical assistance. Appinuium is a Salesforce-approved solution, which enables Jobversity to provide dynamic real-time dashboards for each client. This includes tracking the status of each student, courses started, completed, or abandoned. For clients who have opted into the micro-franchise version, they are enabled to use Salesforce to track all activities of their job seekers, as well as access to online English language training modules (currently sourced by Education First).  

Jobversity has two “end users”: job seekers and job coaches. Our job seekers represent the 2 million skilled, unemployed, and underemployed, immigrant, refugee and asylee professionals in the US. Job coaches include any professional or volunteer who works with skilled newcomers on their job search.  

For newcomer job seekers with experience in finance and IT, Jobversity offers practical, easy to learn online lessons in the essential or soft skills. To date, Upwardly Global’s combination of soft skills and acculturation training, industry-specific coaching and skilling opportunities, and employer education efforts have resulted in 7,100+ newcomers moving from marginalization into professional roles at an average starting wage of $57,00. 

For job coaches, Jobversity’s learning pathways ensures that job seekers are enabled to reach their goals. As noted, Jobversity developed a learning pathway for job coaches, drawing from our collective experience helping skilled immigrants. With the creation of these learning modules, we are increasing the capacities of the job coach to serve this unique population, meeting them where they are to accelerate their engagement with the world of professional work. 

The onset of COVID-19 has made it more important than ever for foreign-born professionals to understand and align themselves with the norms and practices of the US workforce. The newcomer competing for the job will stand out if they have mastered the soft skills or essential skills of the hiring process and workplace. Jobversity has distilled these in-demand skills into micro-courses that are engaging, practical, and direct. Combine this with insightful job coaching that is focused on identifying career pathways for skilled, job seekers, this talent pool will be well-positioned to compete and secure professional employment. 

Jobversity is an innovative solution as it has improved upon existing ideas of online learning (SaaS) while leveraging a technology-based solution – Salesforce – to create client management efficiencies. Our innovation rests in this space – leveraging proven technology solutions, developing unique and engaging content on soft skills and job coaching, and then inviting users (nonprofits, community colleges, workforce systems) to access through a subscription model.  

By contrast, other organizations that offer this type of online learning are steeped in the ESOL sector. While the ESOL/ESL mindset can lead to effective LMS for English Language Learners, this mindset, when applied to soft skills learning simply fails to appreciate the experience of our skilled job seekers. Online learning for workforce development professionals (aka job coaches) is abundant. To our knowledge, none of the available curriculum focus on the needs and opportunities for skilled immigrants.  

Jobversity content – training modules, instructional videos, micro-courses, resource guides – is housed on our custom Learning Management System (LMS) weGlo. weGlo, which is also used by 1,600+ Upwardly Global  direct service recipients annually, is home to a robust e-library of in-house developed soft skill and cross-cultural learning materials. These include competency curriculum for job seekers, trainings around immigrant/refugee workplace inclusion and equitable recruitment/hiring practices targeting employers and D&I stakeholders; and “train the trainer” content targeting service providers seeking to effectively support skilled immigrants and refugees who come through their doors. Integrated within weGlo is a course feedback mechanism for ongoing qualitative data collection to inform upcoming course changes and improvements. 

weGlo is hosted by LMS platform Appinium, a leading provider of content distribution and tracking solutions that is native to Salesforce, Upwardly Global's custom database and CRM tool enables us to directly track and sync engagement with Jobversity content to our core database, conduct ongoing M&E and continuously improve, update and add new content in-line with evolving labor market trends and job seeker needs. The use of weGlo and digital service delivery enable us to grow our unique solution efficiently and exponentially to job seekers and the organizations who serve them across the US and worldwide. 

This solution uses two widely used and accepted technologies including Salesforce, a leading cloud computing service as a software company that specializes in customer relationship management (CRM). Salesforce, in particular, is widely adopted by nonprofit organizations and social enterprises alike, and is particularly valued for its ability to “break down silos between fundraising, program management, marketing and technology teams by giving a single shared view of the organization and all those associated with it.”  

Our LMS is built on Appinium, which enables seamless integration with Salesforce. Specifically, Jobversity uses Appinium’s ‘LearnTrac’ application, a world-class LMS for Salesforce that allows us to manage and track all learning activities, across all learner groups (job seeker, service provider, employer), using any device, all within the Salesforce platform. By using a Salesforce-enabled LMS provider, we ensure Jobversity’s unparalleled capabilities around content access control and consumption analytics.  

Problem: More than 2 million skilled immigrants and refugees in the US, languishing in jobs that do not reflect their knowledge, skills, and experience (aka brain waste). Direct service social sector agencies and government are not designed to serve more than 1,000 skilled job seekers per year. Additionally, too few workforce development workers (job coaches) do not understand how to coach this unique population.  

Long Term Goal: Skilled immigrant professionals can move from survival job to professional US employment efficiently by improving their understanding of US workforce culture, norms, and practices, as job coaches, understanding the opportunity; Cross-sector stakeholders work tirelessly to support integration of newcomers in their communities. 

To achieve the long-term goal, Jobversity will create an enabling environment where:

Step 1:  Service providers are equipped with the training and expertise needed to effectively receive and serve this population. 

Outputs: Welcoming centers, workforce development organizations, nonprofits, and resettlement agencies build high-impact program models, including how to coach newcomers, build employer engagement models, and deliver culturally competent programming.  

Short-term outcomes: Service providers demonstrate ability to serve skilled newcomers and can provide differentiated services. 

Step 2: New Americans access training and resources around how to effectively navigate a professional job search, interview processes, networking environments and more.  

Outputs: Job seekers gain competencies in developing a US-style professional resume, cross-cultural communication, and critical professional norms. 

Short-term outcomes: Job seekers feel confident and prepared to launch a professional job search.  

Evidence to support: Our theory of change is informed by Upwardly Global’s 20+ years working directly with skilled immigrants which has informed our understanding of the most efficacious interventions. We partner with agencies like Migration Policy Institute, IMPRINT, and World Education Services (WES) to bolster efforts with relevant research and policies. 

Jobversity also leverages UpGlo’s partnership with 50+ employers to inform corporate education/engagement strategies. This includes a current engagement with Accenture, WES and OC Tanner through which we are exploring how best to champion inclusion in our workforce post-COVID. 

In one year, Jobversity serves approximately 4,500 unique users, which includes individuals who access our free resource library. As of May 2020, there are ten paying Jobversity clients, with combined contracts worth $135,186 annually; reaching 310 end-users / job seekers, this includes two government contracts. Jobversity is interested in growing its paid client-base over the next five years. In that time, we intend to reach (annually) 5,000 job seekers, have contracts with nine cities or states, and contractual arrangements with eight workforce investment boards and three chambers of commerce. At the end of five years, earned revenues are estimated to be $100,000 and government contracts will be valued at $500,000. 

Over the next 12-months, we will continue to engage existing clients, make outreach to former clients, and engage at least one workforce system. Our immediate focus will be to build strategic partnerships and identify new target communities that represent fertile ground for expansion. 

To achieve this, we will leverage tools like the New American Econony (NAE) Cities Index, a comprehensive look at how the largest US cities integrate newcomers. We believe that alignment with cities which support opportunities and prosperity for immigrants are well-suited to be Jobversity adopters and thus are the natural next step for our growth strategy. 

We will explore partnerships with these cities against our own four indicators 1) readiness to partner; 2) capacity to invest; 3) CBO infrastructure; and 4) collective action capacity, determining priority geographies and conducting stakeholder analysis/mapping to identify actors with whom to partner.  

Concurrently, we will continue to invest in weGlo, building out robust digital learning pathways and improving user experience for job seekers and service providers. We will additionally convert insights, perspectives and feedback from ongoing employer engagement efforts into new tools and products targeting employers to drive wide-scale behavior and systems-level changes that promote immigrant workforce inclusion.   

Our vision over the next five years is to harness new strategic partnerships and investments in our tools/platform to grow and scale our solution to affect the lives of more newcomers, with a goal of reaching 50,000 users by 2025. 

Prior to COVID-19, the global economy was experience slowed growth and labor market tightening. The pandemic has had severe economic consequences, with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) officially declaring a recession on June 8. This downturn will affect some Americans more than others, with immigrants being amongst the most vulnerable groups.  

Current Jobversity clients are struggling to find quality employment in an extremely competitive job market. Moreover, newcomers who have earned their degrees and experience abroad will now compete for fewer jobs against native-born candidates with made-in-the-US credentials. Likewise, employers in sectors hit hardest by this economic downturn may de-prioritize diversity/equity/inclusion efforts as they make budget cuts. 

These challenging and uncertain external circumstances underscore the urgent need to invest in this vulnerable community. This initiative will ensure that newcomers can build the skills needed to be resilient and successful as they embark upon their professional job search. By supporting immigrants –many of whom have filled essential low-wage jobs on the frontlines of the COVID crisis – in building out promising career pathways, we ensure an economic recovery that is inclusive, equitable and enriched by their unmatched talent. We must also acknowledge that immigrants have historically contributed greatly to the US’ economic vitality, reaping incredible dividends for their host communities and the employers who hire them. 

To address COVID-related market barriers, the team is exploring solutions to better support the job search process for users (including Upwardly Global alumni) who are trying to secure employment in an exceptionally tight labor market as follows:

1) Integrating supplementary opportunities for job seekers onto the Jobversity platform, such as financial literacy training or ESL delivered via third-party providers. We are exploring  implementation of on-demand mini-coaching sessions for users seeking one-off guidance on interview prep and applications. These additions would make us a “one-stop platform” for workforce development services, ensuring job seekers have the necessary support systems and can make good use of the soft skills developed through our training. 

2) Integrating new opportunities for front-line staff, including “masterclass” coaching sessions with UpGlo job coaches to gain practical knowledge and hands-on experience from experts around coaching newcomers through their job search. We expect to expand practitioner-facing curriculum, including new content for coaches serving different (ie middle-skill) immigrant communities. 

Lastly, recognizing that many organizations lack the infrastructure for virtual service delivery in the time of COVID, we are leveraging our digital platform to support partners. We recently secured a donation from Salesforce for 2,000 licenses that will allow us to grant job seekers across the US access to weGlo and a free, curated set of our tools. We hope this effort will help to mitigate the widescale economic disruption caused by COVID. We began distributing licenses to partners in April.  

55 employed by Upwardly Global; 4 are on the Jobversity team

Jobversity harnesses the expertise and data of Upwardly Global, translating this experience into a proven intervention for job seekers and service providers. Upwardly Global is the first and longest-serving organization focused on the unique workforce integration needs of immigrant professionals. We have honed our direct service model since opening our doors in the Bay Area in 2000 and have since scaled it to New York City, Chicago, DC, Seattle and Houston. To-date, our direct service model has moved 7,100+ newcomers from unemployment and severe underemployment into professional roles, earning an average salary of $57,000 – a transformative income increase of nearly $50,000 per household.  

Jobversity is led by a team of four with a combined 50+ years of professional experience across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors in areas including in technology, instructional design, program implementation, corporate engagement, outreach and community-building, and fundraising. Two team members are immigrants themselves (from Ethiopia and Sudan respectively) and alumni of Upwardly Global’s program, and thus are deeply familiar with and reflective of our target community. Our VP of Technology has been with the organization for a decade, starting as the organization’s Salesforce Administrator; our National Account Manager began as a Program Intern and later worked as a job coach with IT job seekers. Jobversity’s Senior Director has extensive experience in nonprofit strategic planning, partnerships, and fundraising. Lastly, the team’s newly-hired Instructional Designer has broad experience in graphic design, UX/UI and eLearning content creation. 

Employer Partners: We have 50+ partnerships with employers ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500s like Accenture, LinkedIn, Salesforce, and OC Tanner. We partner with employers on immigrant-friendly D&I initiatives, as well as with HR professionals to ensure they have systems/policies in place that support the successful recruitment and retention of newcomers in the workplace. We engage employer partners directly to co-design solutions and tools to support this effort. 

Micro-Franchisees: Jobversity partners with service providers who license Upwardly Global’s program design, training tools and shared services to deliver their own “white-label” version of Upwardly Global’s direct service program. This is one of the most successful and cost-effective ways to scale our intervention to communities in which Upwardly Global does not provide direct services. One of Jobversity’s Micro-franchise partners is the State of Michigan’s Michigan International Talent Solutions (MITS), a governmental program providing job search training and coaching to skilled immigrants using our tools, infrastructure and guidance. 

Blended Model: This is an intentional integration of Jobversity products and services into the existing program structure of the partnering organizations. One of our key Blended Model partners is the Welcoming Center of New Pennsylvanians, a nonprofit promoting inclusive economic growth through immigrant integration.  

Other Jobversity partner organizations include the African Bridge Network, Anne Arundel Community College system, Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, Catholic Charities of Tennessee, Global Talent Idaho (GTI), IntWork, Jewish Vocational Services of Boston, and WES. 

Jobversity is a SaaS providing access to digital learning tools for skilled immigrants and the job coaches who work with them. We offer a turnkey solution for workforce providers who want to facilitate immigrant job seekers' understanding of the US job market – the norms, customs, and practices. For workforce providers, Jobversity’s practitioner learning pathway is a resource for understanding the immigrant job seeker and a coaching tool on career pathways. For workforce agencies, our LMS provides easy access dashboards to track job seeker progress. As an acknowledged leader in both workforce and immigrant services, Jobversity is designed by and for skilled immigrants. 

While the impact of Jobversity on job seekers and job coaches has been demonstrated by repeat and new customers, the initiative has been unable to realize a financial return that could sustain Jobversity’s ongoing costs. Currently the price structure is based on license structure, offered in packages beginning with 15 seats/users. The job coaching learning pathway is $75 per seat, with no maximum or minimum required. In 2021, Upwardly Global will be revising the pricing structure, offering a choice of 3-4 packages for customers. In addition, we will offer a direct-to-customer option for those seeking an individual license for private use. In restructuring the offering in packages, Jobversity can more effectively manage its own resources relative to support. Accordingly, a higher priced package will include a more bespoke package, with the option to co-create new content. 

As a SaaS, Jobversity is positioned to be self-sufficient by the sale of licenses in five years. Currently, our funding is a mix of patient philanthropy, government contracts, and sale of licenses. As we transition to the “packaged” pricing model and integrate additional services into our platform (e.g. financial literacy, ESL) through referral agreements, Jobversity will become a one-stop platform for professional immigrants and job coaches. Over the next three years, philanthropy will continue to be the largest revenue source for Jobversity, followed by government grants and then earned revenue. In years four and five, there will be a reduction in philanthropy as earned revenue and government contracts increase. Ultimately, Jobversity will be sustained primarily through government grants followed by earned revenue. At some time over the course of the next five years, Jobversity will also explore its fitness for a social impact bond. 

Jobversity could undoubtedly benefit from Solve’s community of peers, funders and experts – and the breadth of mentorship and strategic advice afforded to us via this opportunity – as we explore how best to take this initiative towards growth and sustainability. While our aim is to reach thousands – and eventually millions – of immigrant and refugee beneficiaries in the US and beyond, Jobversity is managed by a team of four and could specifically use guidance from experts around how to execute and attain a sustainable and self-sufficient business model.  

We also hope Solve’s global network will enable connections to new institutional partners, including representatives from city and local governments from NAE’s index that we determine are well-suited to be Jobversity adopters due to their commitments to immigrant integration and, potentially, private sector representatives interested in fostering widescale immigrant workforce inclusion.  

We are confident that Solve’s cross-sector community of experts would be well-positioned not only to support us in mapping up and connecting with key stakeholders (including service providers, government actors and employers) but in reviewing our strategy, business model, pricing, and more – particularly as we adapt our program approach to ensure we are meeting job seekers’ skill-building and “future of work” needs in a post-COVID labor market.

We need help from product integration experts and go-to-market strategists to help us build a more flexible and customer-need-focused product presentation, access, and delivery. This will include creating a delivery model that is easiest for nonprofits, workforce centers and employers to adopt; support around product development and making in-house designed content nimble and capable of addressing varying partner needs; guidance as we expand product offerings to be inclusive of employers; consultancy around developing our go-to-market strategy, including developing a pricing model to accommodate partners with varying levels of resources; guidance from experts as we build out industry-specific resources for highly-regulated industries like Healthcare and IT. Lastly, we are interested in exploring how to integrate external programming (ie training provided by third-party institutions) onto our platform so that job seekers can build on soft skills developed through core training.  

As referenced throughout, one of our top priorities is connecting immigrant and refugee-serving agencies and workforce development. This includes the entire ecosystem of organizations (including city and local government agencies, refugee & immigrant services departments, welcoming centers, offices of New Americans, community colleges and adult education providers, and workforce development centers) situated within communities with high populations of New Americans and a demonstrated commitment to fostering immigrant integration and workforce inclusion. We would be grateful for introductions to state, city, and municipal government stakeholders across the US, including in CO, CT, NE, PA, OH, IN, TX, MO and others. 

We would additionally benefit greatly from introductions to private sector Solve Members like Nike, GM, HP and others who would be interested in participating in active conversations/co-design sessions around employer education/engagement solutions around creating an inclusive culture for newcomers and/or are interested in integrating immigrant-specific D&I initiatives within their HR/recruitment practices. 

With more people currently displaced from their homes by war, conflict, and natural disaster, there is an increasing imperative for host countries to create durable solutions to support asylum seekers and refugees with integrating into their new communities, both socially and economically.  

Jobversity is well-positioned to support this effort and to grow and scale to meet demand. Our focus on skilled newcomers and equitable access to opportunities and resources supports the success of newcomers, ensuring their place on a trajectory towards self-sufficiency, upward mobility and meaningful career pathways – regardless of the new community in which they resettle. 

While many refugee resettlement agencies and other asylee/refugee-serving organizations have integrated employment and job training programs into their suite of services, they often lack the expertise and capacity to help skilled, college-educated newcomers find gainful employment, often resulting in individuals with robust experience and education in fields like healthcare, technology and engineering taking “survival jobs” as rideshare drivers and cashiers that leave them trapped in a never-ending cycle of insecurity and locked out of opportunities for advancement. 

This Prize will enable Jobversity’s work directly with refugees – and the organizations in their host countries who receive them, enhancing their capacity and competencies to effectively serve those who have in-demand skills and experiences to be leveraged, allowing refugees and other displaced people to resume their careers, secure their futures and rebuild their lives with dignity. 

Upwardly Global and Jobversity will reach skilled, unemployed and severely underemployed, immigrants across the US, equipping them with the soft/essential skills to navigate the US job system. In addition, our job coach learning program will enable coaches to work more efficiently and effectively with skilled newcomers.   

The GM Prize would be leveraged for several key Jobversity investments, including writing and creating new curriculum and resources for immigrant and refugee job seekers that help them build essential employability skills and market-aligned digital skills. We also seek investments in our training content for service providers to ensure that they can effectively receive and guide skilled immigrants into professional employment. Finally, we are interested in developing employer-facing tools and curriculum, aimed at helping create champions for immigrant and refugee hiring within the private sector and educating companies around the inherent value of the inclusion of global talent in their workforces.

We hope to additionally build on existing employer-engagement efforts to understand the major talent needs and skills gaps they are experiencing so that we can better position skilled newcomers across the US to fill the roles that are in high-demand in a post-COVID labor market. This effort is particularly urgent within the current economic context, as this community faces additional hurdles and must now compete for fewer jobs in an exceptionally challenging job market and are up against native-born candidates with professional degrees and experienced earned in the US.