Alumni Spotlight: A new era of job recruitment
For the past 15 years, Maya Huber’s career was completely unrelated to technology. The 37 year old mother of three, who is currently completing her PhD in occupational therapy, has worked on the largest government projects relating to employment of people with disabilities.
A repeating problem she noticed was that the workplace often excluded diverse and underrepresented segments of society: at-risk individuals, the elderly, disabled people, those with chronic illness -- were all being disregarded and dismissed by recruiters throughout the existing hiring process. “About a third of the population is excluded from the work selection process because the current system does not evaluate abilities,” Huber says in frustration. “If there are gaps in a CV because of an illness or disability, those resumes are automatically dropped from hiring systems, or receive lower grades.”
Joining forces with Mor Panfil, an expert in labor studies and Huber's colleague for the past decade, they founded Skillset in order to create a new standard for recruiting in the job market. “This is a platform which connects employers to job seekers according to their existing skill set,” Huber explains. After filling out a detailed questionnaire, a candidate is offered various suitable job vacancies. Then, smart simulation tests, tailor-made to the relevant job environment, including sounds and disturbances of a real workplace, are at the core of the Skillset solution. Call center operator candidates, for example, will perform the test while sounds of diletones and phones ringing surround them, and incoming calls interrupt their routine. The platform output then immediately provides a precise feedback on the potential employee’s ability to fulfil the specific role.
“No more ‘Click and Pray’,” Huber says, referring to the current method of sending one’s CV and frustratingly awaiting a reply, which frequently never comes. “This is an inclusive, performance - based evaluation, which is transparent and objective for both sides.” Both the employer and the job seeker get the immediate assessment and can know if there’s a good fit within the company.
“For years, there has been a stagnation in the employment and hiring fields,” Huber claims. “It is unfathomable that technology itself has yet to be recruited to this issue.” In 2019, armed with just an idea, Huber and Panfil entered 8200 Impact’s fifth cohort: “We were completely clueless, shifting from the world of rehabilitation to entrepreneurship,” she recalls. “It was exactly the training we needed to accelerate our venture and begin our journey.” From understanding basic terms (“we were the ones who kept asking what do those acronyms stand for”, she laughs) to transferring from the slower world of government services to the guerilla fast-paced innovation market, the cofounders graduated with a full and ready-to-go MVP. They’ve recently concluded participation in the global Techstars accelerator and are on the verge of international breakout and pre-seed funding.
For more details visit skillsetech.com.
