Hiring through Jobseekrs - Unbiasedly!

In the last 3 months, the world has changed. A pandemic has altered the way we work and certain events have caused us, to realise and reflect on the role unconscious bias has in limiting opportunities for certain groups of people. It almost feels like the true reason why Jobseekrs was created needs a bit less explaining.

Jobseekrs is an AI powered job site that matches candidates to job opportunities unbiasedly based on 2 key factors; their competency to the job role and their culture-alignment with a company. Our machine learning algorithm combines the results from these two factors into a percentage fit score for each candidate. It presents these candidates to the employer anonymously only showing the percentage fit score for initial vetting; not their name, gender or any other thing that may cause bias.

Our mission is to ensure everyone has equal chances at all job opportunities globally.

The hiring process is expensive and mistakes made take a long time and money to rectify. We all have an unconscious bias which presents itself in the recruitment process. Unconscious bias happens when you form an opinion about candidates based solely on first impressions as "like hires like". Additionally, culture is the glue that holds an organisation together. Almost 80% of millennials consider how they fit into the company culture before taking on a job.

Globally, the Jobs and Recruitment market is worth over £450bn. The recruitment industry is bigger than ever, worth over £35.7 billion to the UK economy and grew by 11% in 2017/18. Globally, 62% of job seekers are using mobile devices for their job search. The increasing number of millennials in the workforce is one of the biggest shifts in workplace diversity, and they are expected to make up (75%) most of the working population by 2025. The Global online market size is £32 Billion by 2022, £6 Billion in Europe, £5 Billion in USA.

The demographic of candidates seeking job opportunities is constantly shifting with over 2 Billion millennials worldwide, 17 million millennials in the UK and over 71 million youth globally have experienced unemployment.

Jobseekrs seeks to provide a solution to candidates seeking opportunities. Jobseekrs is a web platform that mitigates unconscious bias at the sourcing and screening stage of recruitment. Once a candidate applies for a job, our algorithm focuses on TWO important key factors when recruiting; the candidate's competency to the job and the candidate's culture-alignment to the company. Our algorithm combines these two factors and presents a percentage-fit score to the employer. Employers only see the candidate's percentage-fit score to the company and the job opportunity and not their name, gender, or ethnicity. Employers then pay a fee (lower cost-per-hire than recruitment agencies) to engage with the candidate with the highest percentage-fit score. This process is innovative and mitigates unconscious bias during the vetting process by highlighting what is truly important and giving every candidate a fair chance. Following this, employers can communicate with the candidates, and invite them for interviews. This makes the recruitment process more efficient & cuts out the need for the social face-face element which traditional recruitment requires and is subject to unconscious bias.

So far, Jobseekrs has developed and launched the web platform. This includes culture and job competency matching algorithm as well as interview scheduling.

For an employer:

·      Hire diverse and qualified candidates

·      Increase their profitability as research shows Diverse teams outperform their competitors by over 40% in profitability

·      Increase efficiency in the recruitment process

·      The cost of one bad hire is £10,000 on average. Jobseekrs will drastically reduce time, cost and churn by carefully curating a candidate qualified for the job role and culturally-aligned to the culture of the company.

For all young people, women, ethnic minorities, migrants, refugees, under-represented people and all candidates using the platform

·      Jobseekrs focuses on your skills match to the job role and your ideal company culture – we believe anyone in the right diverse and inclusive work culture will thrive with more career progression and be more productive 

·      Jobseekrs mitigates unconscious bias at the sourcing and screening stage – the employer doesn’t see your name, gender, age, university attended or anything that could create a form of bias. Only focuses on what is important – your skills to the job role and culture alignment to the company

·      Jobseekrs will provide educational content that will allow candidates to upskill – hard and soft skills.This is both preemployment preparation and personal development.

The challenge is called: "How can marginalized populations access and create good jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves". Jobseekrs as a solution completely focuses on ensuring marginalised populations get access to opportunities especially with the right skills. We believe there truly is a lack of access to opportunity and this is because "like hires like". Through Jobseekrs, we would give everyone a fighting chance. We are aware that we can't mitigate bias throughout the process but we want to ensure candidates get to atleast get to interview stage. 

Although our model and approach are different, we still face a significant field of rivals including; indeed, LinkedIn, monster jobs just to name a few as well as start-ups such as debut and Caroo who are looking into the same space. However, it is clear that there is currently still no clear market leader that truly combines the power of personality, opportunity and culture fit. There are no jobsites that truly focus on mitigating unconscious bias. It is worth noting that what Jobseekrs offers is combing the power of “blind recruiting” and psychometric culture fit to produce a more powerful output where the candidate matches the job role and aligns with the company culture.

Additionally, the Jobseekrs app is offline-enabled. A large amount of the technological advances come from the offline functionality, which is built in such a way to replicate as much of the online experience as possible without internet connectivity. As a simplified explanation, the offline functionality is built as a layer between the app and the server, caching data where possible, and returning the same responses a server would in the event that it’s unable to be contacted. It allows people with limited data access to still have access to these opportunities and content at all times.

It is worth noting that this technology has been curated and is still advised by the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) who undoubtedly hire the best talent in Technology in the UK.

Jobseekrs uses AI to learn and understand data from the candidate and also the employer and proceed to match them together.

Jobseekrs seeks to provide a solution to candidates seeking opportunities. Jobseekrs is a web platform that mitigates unconscious bias at the sourcing and screening stage of recruitment. Once a candidate applies for a job, our machine learning algorithm focuses on TWO important key factors when recruiting; the candidate's competency to the job and the candidate's culture-alignment to the company. Our algorithm combines these two factors and presents a percentage-fit score to the employer. Employers only see the candidate's percentage-fit score to the company and the job opportunity and not their name, gender, or ethnicity. Employers then pay a fee (lower cost-per-hire than recruitment agencies) to engage with the candidate with the highest percentage-fit score. This process is innovative and mitigates unconscious bias during the vetting process by highlighting what is truly important and giving every candidate a fair chance. Following this, employers can communicate with the candidates, and invite them for interviews. This makes the recruitment process more efficient & cuts out the need for the social face-face element which traditional recruitment requires and is subject to unconscious bias.

So far, Jobseekrs has developed and launched the web platform. This includes culture and job competency matching algorithm as well as interview scheduling.

The machine learning algorithm will become better and well trained as it is provided with more data.

The data collected by the Jobseekrs algorithm is based on simple structured interview questioning. The psychometric culture fit questions were derived from a study in the University of Cambridge following the Big 7 personality tests. These personality tests have been fed into algorithms that have been used for different purposes - Facebook for social networking or Tinder - for dating. Jobseekrs focused on the questions that pertained to employment and work place culture satisfaction. Therefore relating it to ones career. 

These technologies have seen wide success and often ended in the middle of political debates. However, at Jobseekrs, at its core is a matching tool. We match the right candidates to the right companies based on their skills and workplace preference. 

Increase sustained economic growth, higher levels of productivity and technological innovation.

Jobseekrs will enable a wider and more diverse range of individuals to gain employment. This directly addresses sustainable development goal (SDG) 8 specifically target 8.2, 8.5, 8.6 and 8.B. This will increase economic productivity through diversification and technological upgrading and innovation. It will increase decent work for all and reduce the proportion of youth not in employment. It will democratise and decentralise education, training and the process of gaining employment. This addresses (SDG) 4 specifically 4.4, 4.5. This will increase number of youth and adults with relevant skills and allow them to be matched appropriately to the right employment or pursue entrepreneurship.

Following the effects of the COVI19 pandemic and how the social inequities have only grown further, education, training and routes to employment for ALL are even more vital.

Ultimately, it would increase the job creation in any country.

Over the last three months, a pandemic has shone the light on health and social inequalities that already existed and additionally, events in the United States has caused companies and governments alike to reflect on hiring practices, recruitment efforts, venture capitalists are opening more funds for ethnic minorities with Softbank pledging $100 million to ethnic minorities (https://www.businessinsider.com/softbank-100-million-opportunity-fund-companies-people-of-color-2020-6?r=US&IR=T) and CEOs are pledging for Diversity and Inclusion in their workspaces https://www.ceoaction.com/pledge/. 

As founders who have been working on this since 2017, we feel a shift to no longer have to explain what "unconscious bias" is. We believe finally, the world is realising there is something called "unconscious bias" which all of us have and it only widens the gap between the haves and the have nots regardless of how talented or skilled this person is. We believe this proves the impact Jobseekrs will have in the recruitment space and hiring practices to open opportunities to everyone. 

Metrics after 6 week launch (Today-June 2020):

Number of companies: 10

Number of candidates : 303

Recruited: 0

Metrics after 1 year:

Number of active users on the platform after 1 year: 100,000 candidates

Total Number of employers signed up to the platform: 1000

Number of jobs on the platform: 2000

Number of installations of the platform (job seekers): 300,000

Number of diverse candidates recruited: 10,000

Average length of retention: move to above 2-3 years

Metrics after 5 years:

Number of active users on the platform after 5 years: 1,000,000 candidates

Total Number of employers signed up to the platform: 10,000

Number of jobs on the platform: 30,000

Number of installations of the platform (job seekers): 1,300,000

Number of diverse candidates recruited: 100,000

Goals within the next year:

Short Term (2-3 months): Video Interviewing on the platform. Moving from only scheduling an interview to conducting a 1 to 1 and group video interview on the platform.  

Medium Term (5-6 months): Developing & deploying Mobile App. In addition to the web platform, this would ease accessibility for candidates and increase the talent pool for employers. 

Long Term (9-12 months): Developing Educational Content on the platform. Developing infrastructure to host educational content on the platform. This content would cover upskilling and development of soft and hard skills. This is applicable beyond geographical boundaries and in the context of the job search process. It would revolutionise and decentralise how young people learn and continue engagement and dissemination of information beyond academic institution teaching walls.

Goals within the next 5 years:

Exponentially grow the Educational content on the platform & enhance the user interface and user experience on the platform. 

Financially, we would need to raise a significant amount of money to reach these goals. Technically, we would need to hire developers and bring this inhouse. Presently, the Technology has been developed by our development partners, Blue Beck. Blue Beck is a pioneering, multi-platform, digital engineering company committed to building solutions that make a better and healthier everyday accessible for everyone. From health tech to entertainment, Blue Beck has produced award- winning apps, games and connected solutions for some of the biggest brands in the world such as the Call of Duty game, marvel and the three app. BlueBeck, a Cheshire based full stack developer with over 20+ years in experience. Bluebeck brings the most value in terms of cost, money, and experience for our project. Legally, we would need to register the company in the United States and familiarise ourselves with the culture and business operation there. 

We are currently raising funds, our first investor and chairman, David Moffatt who is one of the founders of Monster jobs and he grew Monster Jobs from startup to $400 million in revenue in 5 years has committed to being a lead investor. This will allow us to gain the Technical development team, marketing and growth team in house. 

N/A

3 full time staff

1 marketing contractor agency 

1 technology development agency

Our first investor, chairman and advisor -- Mr. David Moffatt. David is a senior level Director with significant operational management for public and private owners across a variety of sectors including technology, FMCG, healthcare, distributed networks, recruitment, on-line & offline media, manufacturing, distribution, logistics and public sector. He was also one of the founders of Monster jobs and grew it from start-up to $400 million in revenue in 5 years.

Founder & CEO -- Jamaal Brathwaite: Serial entrepreneur with his first business in the recruitment industry called, NextGen Interview. NextGen Interview received investment from Brian Lewis Founder of Cash Generator and former Chairman of the UK Franchise Association. NextGen was sold to a large US corporation for over 6 figures.

Director & Project manager -Dr. Elsa Zekeng, a PhD in Infectious Disease & Global Health and over 5 years of experience in partnerships with universities, student and candidate engagement and development for societal impact.

The Technology has been developed by our development partners, Blue Beck. Blue Beck is a pioneering, multi-platform, digital engineering company. Our marketing partners are Sharpen Digital who have worked for the LadBible, the biggest British Internet Media with over 120 million followers.

The team has over 25 years of experience in skills development in sales, marketing, technology, recruitment, science & technology. The organisation has seen first-hand the skills mismatch with universities and businesses in the United Kingdom and have worked to readdress this. They have worked with Universities to upskill students through events & competitions.

We had strategic partnerships with 8 universities in the North of England and 10 companies in the greater Manchester area. Unfortunately, due to the COVID19, these partnerships are not in effect at the moment but we hope to resume them once the world stabilises. 

Jobseekrs is free for candidates to use and free for clients to post jobs.

Our business model relies on Clients purchasing "applicant credits" to view a candidate's profile. Each "Applicant Credit" equates to a CV.

This is a pre-screened candidate that is suited to the company's culture and to the job role.

This means that our revenue stream will be generated on a (PPR) Pay-Per Reveal model where an employer purchases (Credits) which they can use across all their job ads to reveal the candidate's full profile. We call it, diversity and equality through merit-based hiring.

Example: Packages of Credits 5 / 15 / 30 @ £100 per credit &

Packages of 80 / 120 / 150 @ £50 per credit. The company must sign up to a minimum of 3 months commitment then billing becomes monthly rolling.

Employers and recruiters want an easy and relatively low-cost way to sieve through applicants while still ensuring they are competent for the job opportunity and align with the company's culture. 

As stated above, our revenue stream will be generated on a (PPR) Pay-Per Reveal model where an employer purchases (Credits) which they can use across all their job ads to reveal the candidate's full profile. We call it, diversity and equality through merit-based hiring.

Example: Packages of Credits 5 / 15 / 30 @ £100 per credit &

80 / 120 / 150 @ £50 per credit. The company must sign up to a minimum of 3 months commitment then billing becomes monthly rolling.

In addition to this, we would raise investment capital to support the growth of Jobseekrs.

Securing employment is a goal we all work towards from the time we are born and start school. This process is filled with various obstacles and uncertainties which are usually dependent on geographical location and opportunities available. Unfortunately, the COVID19 pandemic has extremely increased these obstacles with a decrease in the opportunities available, job losses and many companies face uncertainties on the future. COVID19 has made social inequities more glaring and it is even more important now to ensure that all candidates are recruited fairly and diversely without bias. Jobseekrs specifically aims to improve the employment of under-represented groups in particular among young people, women, ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees. Through concentrated educational video content, jobseekrs will also improve training and upskilling with soft and hard skills in all across all industries which will allow candidates to standout to employers during the recruitment process to secure employment.

 Currently, the education, training and recruitment processes are heavily reliant on social engagement, face to face meetings and several onboarding steps which are all steeped in degrees and levels of personal and institutional bias. Jobseekrs would democratise learning, training, upskilling and employment and offer everyone a fair chance. Through Solve, I hope to be able to increase the chances and the odds of everyone seeking employment. 

So far, Jobseekrs has developed the web platform, culture-alignment and job competency matching algorithm and interview scheduling. We aim to develop the video interviewing process to host 1-1 and group interviews. We would create & host educational videos that address soft and hard skills.

In order to grow, we would require marketing, media and exposure to support adoption en masse but also, partners to ensure its distribution to companies. 

The technology is reliant on AI and so we would appreciate partners to develop this further to make it as accurate as possible. 

We don't have specific names in mind but would focus on partners who believe in the mission of Jobseekrs. 

Technology partners to enhance the AI and Data analysis, Marketing partner to ensure exponential adoption of the platform and key stakeholders to adopt and aid in growth and distribution on the employers and companies side. 

Securing employment is a goal we all work towards from the time we are born and start school. This process is filled with various obstacles and uncertainties which are usually dependent on geographical location and opportunities available. Unfortunately, the COVID19 pandemic has extremely increased these obstacles with a decrease in the opportunities available, job losses and many companies face uncertainties on the future. COVID19 has made social inequities more glaring and it is even more important now to ensure that all candidates are recruited fairly and diversely without bias. Jobseekrs specifically aims to improve the employment of under-represented groups in particular among young people, women, ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees. Through concentrated educational video content, jobseekrs will also improve training and upskilling with soft and hard skills in all across all industries which will allow candidates to standout to employers during the recruitment process to secure employment.

The funds will be put towards, working capital, marketing and advertising but also working with organisations that work with refugees to ensure more refugees have visibility of the jobseekrs platform and can apply for jobs through the platform unbiasedly with their skills and experiences, no matter where they come from.

Securing employment is a goal we all work towards from the time we are born and start school. This process is filled with various obstacles and uncertainties which are usually dependent on geographical location and opportunities available. Unfortunately, the COVID19 pandemic has extremely increased these obstacles with a decrease in the opportunities available, job losses and many companies face uncertainties on the future. COVID19 has made social inequities more glaring and it is even more important now to ensure that all candidates are recruited fairly and diversely without bias. Jobseekrs specifically aims to improve the employment of under-represented groups in particular among young people, women, ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees. Through concentrated educational video content, jobseekrs will also improve training and upskilling with soft and hard skills in all across all industries which will allow candidates to standout to employers during the recruitment process to secure employment.

The funds will be put towards, working capital, marketing and advertising to ensure everyone including women and girls have visibility of the jobseekrs platform and can apply for jobs through the platform unbiasedly with their skills and experiences, no matter where they come from. Furthermore, we would carryout pre employment upskilling courses for candidates who may be interested in these positions but don't yet have the right skills. This will empower and upskill them to go apply for their desired career. 

Securing employment is a goal we all work towards from the time we are born and start school. This process is filled with various obstacles and uncertainties which are usually dependent on geographical location and opportunities available. Unfortunately, the COVID19 pandemic has extremely increased these obstacles with a decrease in the opportunities available, job losses and many companies face uncertainties on the future. COVID19 has made social inequities more glaring and it is even more important now to ensure that all candidates are recruited fairly and diversely without bias. Jobseekrs specifically aims to improve the employment of under-represented groups in particular among young people, women, ethnic minorities, migrants and refugees. Through concentrated educational video content, jobseekrs will also improve training and upskilling with soft and hard skills in all across all industries which will allow candidates to standout to employers during the recruitment process to secure employment.

The funds will be put towards, working capital, marketing and advertising but also holding companies accountable to ensure they are inclusive and diverse.