Jobvair

The labor market doesn’t have a skills gap; it has an opportunity gap. After being in the recruiting industry for several, we noticed the struggles employers face to find good talent as well as the struggles job seekers face, leading to higher unemployment rates. As of May 2023, there are over 10 million available job openings, and the number of job openings continues to exceed the number of hires. There are currently 5.7 million unemployed people, including 3.3 million Black Americans, within the United States alone. It has been proven that diverse backgrounds, like the black community, face hurdles in the labor market including pay inequality, discrimination, access to job quality and job availability. Black workers have the highest unemployment rate nationally followed by Latino workers. In addition tot he above, on average, full time, working women are still making 17% less than what men are paid. In STEM careers, the gap is even larger. Women consistently earn 40% less than men. This inequity is even greater for Black and Hispanic women. 

Currently, companies use multiple programs in order to find, source and attract talent. In total, 75% of recruiters use some type of recruiting system in the hiring process. This is all due to a lack of enhanced digital business solutions within the market. For the future, 91% of tech companies planned to invest in sourcing tools and technology and 64% of talent acquisition professionals planned to spend on AI-powered recruiting tools. Blockchain has the ability to verify skills, background and credentials instantly. Companies currently struggle with available software tools on the market which don't identify diverse talent while also providing job seekers with employment transparency. 

Being a women-owned business, we understand how other women and underrepresented groups struggle to find employment. Because of this we have become a pillar in the community to help other women either find employment or hire top talent. We are creating a tech solution to fix a large gap in the market while utilizing web3 in a way that no one else has, and our goal is to expand our reach to additional users in 2023. Our product increases job transparency in order to provide job seekers with a clear picture of potential employment. Our unique features highlight diverse backgrounds throughout the hiring process while providing the tools to get noticed in the job market closing the racial wealth and gender gap. In addition, our verification process incentivizes employers to hire from diverse backgrounds. With our platform, candidates can showcase their diverse backgrounds driving social change and economic empowerment while promoting inclusive hiring practices.

Currently, companies use multiple programs in order to find, source and attract talent. Employers also purchase supplementary software solutions to manage the identified talent, interviewing and onboarding. While working with candidates, we have provided resume preparation services, connected job seekers with employers, prepared those job seekers for their interviews, assisted with salary negotiations, and ensured a smooth start to employment. While candidates who work independently have to research companies, jobs, salaries, reviews, etc through multiple sources themselves, 90% of our candidates are likely to find their dream job and receive an offer above market. Therefore, we are automating the process in an easy-to-use application to serve as a one-stop-shop for employment needs. Our platform not only helps the job seeker by perfecting their resume and highlighting applicable skills, diversity characteristics and experience, it also provides transparency throughout the entire job seeking process to include salary ranges, potential job growth, company benefits, average time to hire and tenure within the organization. 

Our solution directly serves job seekers who are seeking a new job within the next 6 months. Our target population is working age adults from 18-65 years to include a variety of backgrounds with a focus on underrepresented and underserved communities, including women and other diverse backgrounds. We have been working in this industry on a daily basis for over 18 years, so we understand the needs of our targeted audience. We stay engaged through various social media methods, and the more our following grows, the more anticipated our product becomes. 

As black women, the CEO knows what it feels like to be a part of an underserved community. Without the proper tools and resources, it can be very difficult to increase your economic standing and find opportunities for career advancement. The CEO has her Bachelor's in Computer Science and a Master's in Cyber Security. After obtaining her degrees, she struggled to find employment even with her degree. Even after finding employment, she realized she was significantly underpaid when compared to her coworkers. She ended up leaving the STEM field and moving into business development when offered an opportunity to branch out. Since then, she has gained significant skills in the industry helping others find jobs. The CEO's journey is an example of what we support within the community. We work everyday to help underrepresented job seekers find jobs. While we do work nationally, we highly support the local communities where our team members grew up to include the Atlanta and DC metro. We have a proven impact in the areas and a strong referral network from success stories. We take feedback from past experience to improve our processes moving forward. More recently, we started gaining more of a social media presence. We take the feedback from our followers to enhance our solutions. The broader our reach, the better the feedback and the stronger the impact. 

 Cumulatively, the team has been working in the HR and Recruiting industry for over 18 years. During our time, we have noticed that many candidates looking for a new position get overlooked due to lacking details on their resume or online profile. We work to incorporate traits that are more likely to catch an employer's eye while providing coaching throughout the interview process. Even though we spend time with several candidates to make sure they all the tools they need, we aren't able to do this for everyone. Therefore, our main goal moving forward is to expand our reach. 

We currently work with over 50 employers (ranging from small to fortune 500 companies) and partners while providing services to thousands of job seekers since we started our business 9 years ago. However, because we have been completing these tasks manually, there are still thousands more job seekers in underrepresented and underserved communities that we aim to help. We currently have an unlaunched prototype version of our platform currently. We aim to launch our product to new users in the next 3 months.

We are wanting to expand our reach in order to help more job seekers, so we are looking to join a support program. We believe that an assessment would tremendously help our growth to determine where we need to allocate our resources for a greater impact. Expanding our  networks has been immeasurable to our success thus far. We believe access to the MIT Solve will help us to broaden our reach and overcome obstacles we may face as we expand. Also, we are always open to refining our business model if it means that our users are benefited. Since this is the first time we are launching a product to market, any assistance with scaling would be tremendously helpful. Although we have gone through other accelerators, we have absorbed everything those programs had to offer and implemented the recommendations. We are diligent in finding solutions to expand our business, and we believe this will provide us with the resources to take our platform to the next level.

After being in the job placement industry for years, she noticed the obstacles many job seekers, especially minorities and persons with disabilities, face in finding well-paying jobs and the resources provided. Many individuals don’t know where to turn for help and don’t even know where to seek guidance. She wanted to implement a new and innovative approach to helping those in her community shrink the racial wealth gap. Therefore, she created an easy-to-use platform to combat these challenges. In addition, her daughter is Autistic. She wants to create a world where she will be accepted and able to thrive when the time comes for her to choose a career path. Jobvair provides opportunity for individuals like her, expanding possibilities in various industries, and we hope to create a future where young, black, neurodiverse women have endless possibilities to be successful. The overall health of our community and its people thrives when small businesses like ours are able to operate successfully. And that is exactly what we are determined to continue to do - to be successful for the benefit of our family and our community. 

In addition, we have partnered with and supported multiple universities to provide thousands of women on a national level with employment career counseling and resume writing services through Delta Phi Epsilon. We offer assistance with any collegiate and alumnae member who have any questions regarding all states of the interview process for various education levels, backgrounds and degrees. We have since opened up this resource to other organizations in order to help women achieve their dream job. We also support the funding for Childhood Cancer Research through Rock for a Reason and Rally each year. 

philanthropy news 

As someone who has been in the recruiting industry for 10+ years, the CEO has seen and experienced the struggle firsthand with fewer job opportunities and lower pay. What she has discovered through experience is that oftentimes, we don’t have advocates to help us through the job seeking, interview, and negotiation process. We once had a black job seeker come to us for help because she never made it past the first in-person interview. “Do you think it’s my natural hair that’s giving me problems? Is that why no one will hire me?” she asked. She responded by telling her we simply need to get her in front of the right company, one that embraces diversity and sees her for the talented person she truly is. She served as her advocate and she was immediately hired by the first company we put her in front of. The issue is, however, many African Americans don’t have advocates when they are in the job market. Our business is changing that.

One of the features that makes our solution innovative is that it increases employment and wages for low and no- wage workers as well as those in historically underrepresented and underserved communities while using Web3 technologies. Another key feature is that we verify and collect key information based on the skills they have and the job they want as well as other key indicators to match diverse backgrounds with employer tax incentives. We have a first-mover advantage in our area of expertise since no other platform matches employers with tax credits for hiring diverse backgrounds. Our product provides an entirely new perspective on the hiring process. No existing platforms cater to the job seeker while leveraging AI technology and scrubbed data to automatically create a custom resume and profiles that clearly communicates job seeker's qualifications while also providing coaching throughout the interviewing and hiring process. 

The biggest contributors to our successful business is dedication and perseverance. We are extremely dedicated to our vision and goals, and we persevere through road blocks in order to reach our milestones. Our short-term goals include releasing our product to the public within the next 3 months. We plan to launch our product to job seekers before expanding to businesses to ensure that our product can handle the foot traffic. Over the next year, we plan to increase our outreach to job seekers. in order to expand our reach by 10x our current capacity. Within the next 2 years, our goal is for our business clients to start implementing our solutions into their recruiting process. Within the next 5 years, we plan to have over a million users annually and expand our product offerings to over 500 businesses leading to an overall increase of unemployment and an increase in pay equality. 

We are measuring our impact by multiple factors including the following:

• The amount of daily, weekly and monthly users
• The amount of returning and continuous users
• The amount of interviews and hires
• The number of employers who utilize our trial period
• The number of continuous employers
• The total number of users who qualify for employment credits

Our product will be determined a success if we have at least 90% of returning users year over year. In addition, we will consider our product a success if 90% of the salaries of job offers are at or above market rate. 

Our solution is already having a strong impact. Since we have been in this industry for over a decade, we see the immediate and lasting effects our services and products have for our users. College graduates who were unemployed for long periods of time who did not have success finding a job after graduation because they didn't know where to look or how to properly create a resume now are employed due to our services and products. Not only did we help them find employment, but we also assisted with coaching and negotiations. Several of the job seekers we have helped are now thriving in their fields and have been promoted several times. Their tenure is phenomenal, and, since their initial unemployment, they haven't had trouble maintaining employment since. Since our services and product offerings have proven to be quite effective, if we can expand our solution to more users, we are confident that we can successfully duplicate the outcome.

According to Brookings, “Instead of focusing on the skills gap, we argue that it’s time to focus on closing the opportunity gap—not only for the benefit of individuals who have been shut out of the labor market, but for society as a whole. Cultivating and investing in diverse talent can unleash regional innovation, economic growth, and community well-being.”

Our core tech stack is based on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Blockchain. While building out our product, we have been utilizing interns and recent graduates who have had trouble obtaining other internships or employment, adding to their skills. Artificial intelligence and machine learning power our resume building and coaching technology. It enhances the user profiles and makes recommendations based on market trends and recent hires. Blockchain is used for certification. We are using it to verify job seekers, including their backgrounds, education and more as well as verifying unique characteristics to determine if they qualify for employment credits, increasing their chances of being hire. 

We currently have 4 employees, 3 full time and 1 part time. Our team consists of the CEO, COO and a developer as full time employees. We utilize an administrative assistant in a part time capacity. We occasionally utilize a contractor when additional developers are needed.

We have been in business for 9 years, but we have been working on this product, to include research & development, for 1.5 years. 

As a certified minority, woman-owned business, diversity & inclusion is an essential part of our business. G2W bridges the divide by serving as advocates for underserved and underrepresented communities, working with employers that embrace diversity, and essentially helping to reduce discrimination at the point of hire. We believe that cultivating and investing in diverse talent can unleash regional innovation, economic growth, and community well-being. We believe that businesses thrive when they integrate diversity into operations as well as include and respect the range of attributes that each employee contributes to the workplace.

We operate on a Business to Consumer to Business model. Our product is available for consumers/ job seekers on a monthly subscription base at an affordable price with a trial period. Within this subscription, job seekers can create various resumes, receive coaching, mentoring and more. Consumers also have the option to make one-time purchases as well as add-on additional features for an upcharge. 

For Businesses, we offer 3 subscription plans. Businesses/ employers have the option to integrate our API modules into their existing platform for an additional monthly charge. Our business subscription model pricing is based on the size of the business and the number of users. In addition, we plan to generate revenue through the federally funded WOTC for up to 10M users annually. 

We have been financially stable and independent for 9 years. We do not currently rely on any outside resources for funding other than our regular revenue generating income. However, in order to expand, we will most likely need to obtain outside funding. During our time in business, we have been providing our services to both job seekers and employers. We have been expanding our reach to additional customers and government contracts. Moving forward, we plan to be seeking investments in order to expand our product, but if we are able to obtain grants, we will not need to seek investments. Long-term, we plan for our product to be self-sustaining and revenue generating in order to not dilute our minority ownership. 

We have successfully been in operation for 9 years. We have generated consisted revenue over the last 9 years, even through Covid-19. We plan for financial stability to come from our subscription-based model. We anticipate enough revenue for continuous growth. We do plan to apply to multiple grants and funding programs in order to avoid seeking investments for as long as possible.