Inspiration
In EU there are 4.7m graduates, 16.3m unemployed and 15.8m NEETs who require an accelerated path towards employment. Unfortunately, 174.000 career support institutions (110.000 public employment centres, 4.000 universities and 60.000 secondary schools) struggle to find a sustainable model able to support everyone, especially nowadays where changes in career paths are more and more frequent (up to 12 times in a lifetime) and social distancing is required. In order to overcome operative limits of traditional brick and mortar services and lack of resources to effectively help everyone, we launched Jobiri, the first digital career advisor which makes use of artificial intelligence to support jobseekers and Institutions.
Why Jobiri is specific to the Hackathon EUvsVirus?
Coronavirus is deeply affecting the real economy and the job market. According to a recent study from McKinsey, it is estimated unemployment levels in the 27-member state could peak at 11.2% (pre coronavirus unemployment rate is 7.3%) due to the coronavirus. Millions of job seekers require immediate career support: in Europe’s wholesale and retail sector, 14.6 millions jobs could be threatened, 8.4 million jobs in accommodation and food and 1.7 million in arts and entertainment. Career guidance providers including schools, universities, employment centers and other Institutions requires a response unprecedented in scale and speed due to the depth and the breadth of this crisis. EU Institutions can embrace Jobiri’s technology to adapt active labour policy market actions to this new challenge. Our technology offers new forms of support, easier access to information and reach wider audiences which will not be supported otherwise.
What it does
JOBIRI is the 1° AI-based digital career advisor able to digitalize employment services. Our solution is an integrated and smart ecosystem of career service tools with a candidate-centric approach that connect jobseekers, Institutions and companies. The platform has 3 interfaces:
The jobseekers’ interface provides:
(i) a smart AI Assistant: Through the automatic collection of thousands of daily job posts from job boards and company websites, JOBIRI is exploiting machine learning models to identify and collect the required hard and soft skills, expertise, seniority, salary, location, company name, industry, types of contract and their related evolution over time for more than 2.700 professional roles. Thanks to artificial intelligence algorithms, this data is matched with jobseekers’ curriculums and used to provide: (i) feedback based on 15 variables to craft a better and more appealing CV (for both automatic screening systems and recruiters) (ii) customized job postings, including recommendations for both linear path or career changes based on the qualification and skills provided by candidates (iii) specific courses to improve skills or overcome skills gaps identified, sourced directly from various providers (MOOCs or other partners) (iv) up-to-date market intelligence information sorted by professional roles to aid candidates in identifying the best source of work in terms of location, company, current job requirements (ie: skills, etc.) or benefits (ie: salary, contracts) to improve job search.
(ii) career goal self-assessment tools (iii) CV and cover letter builders tailored to roles and industries (iv) a self-service interview simulator to discover the best answers and strategies to succeed even in the most challenging interviews (v) an employability skill building library with more than 140 videos (vi) integrated video conference tools, to connect the jobseeker with a career coach
At the same time, JOBIRI is provided to career-supporting institutions, allowing career coaches to: (i) remotely assist jobseekers with video conference tools integrated within the platform. This allows to provide remote career coaching sessions, while respecting social distances (i.e for safety reasons) (ii) provide a more personalized and prompter support based on data (real time intelligence to better guide people) (iii) track candidates’ job search approach and related output (iv) make easier the daily work of career coaches with digital tools
On the employers’ side, JOBIRI (i) provides employer branding tools to attract candidates (it showcases companies’ workspaces, vision, benefits by creating a virtual tour of the company and allowing current employees to become company ambassadors) (ii) it supports recruiters to identify the best candidates (iii) it manages the sourcing process in less time
How we built it
Jobiri is a SaaS (Software as a Service) developed internally by our team, that has the experience, knowledge, talented human resources and the technological assets needed to growth the business.
The co-founders bring together complementary skills in technology, business and HR practices. The CEO and co-founder has 8+ years of experience in strategic consulting with leading roles in international projects (former EY Manager) and consolidated experience in the HR field thanks to his previous job in the 8th largest HR company in Europe. He is also an Assistant Professor at Milan’s Catholic University. The CTO and co-founder has 8+ years of experience in IT software development, business intelligence, machine learning and automation projects with managerial positions in large multinationals (Symantec and Docusign). He has a Master of Science degree in Network and System Security and he has given several speeches at international conferences. During his career he has won various international awards for his works and research.
Alongside the leading team, the team include: 1 Chief Operating Officer, 2 Software Developers, 1 UX Designer, 1 Web Designer, 1 Marketing specialist, 1 Business Developer
Challenges we ran into
We ran into 3 main challenges:
Adapt technology to different languages/countries: the platform is already available in Italian, English and Portuguase. We have already developed an automatic reconciliation system to standardize all job ads and related information according to ESCO. Adding a new language is also relatively cheap.
Resilience to change: dissemination of strong and successful business cases to both Institutions and job seekers levels has helped to raise awareness and demonstrate the efficiency and the effectiveness of our platform
Competition: HR players are either focused on different business (provision of services to employers rather than candidates and Institutions) or lack the skills to shift into this area. At least 2 years of research and development are required to build an alternative technology. It is more convenient for them to purchase our services. Moreover, the solidity of our technical approach combined with the expertise is allowing us to act on time to maintain our competitive advantage. JOBIRI differentiates also from existing and future competitors thanks to its AI algorithms and its growing brand and reputation through key partnership with well-established and renowned Institutions
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Jobiri is available on the market since September 2017. To date we support +50.000 jobseekers and 30 Institutions in Italy and Portugal including universities (the Catholic University of Milan, the University of Venice, ecc.), employment centers at Regional Level (Puglia region), Youth Employment Centers in Lombardia, vocational schools (Ciofs-fp which has more than 50 schools, IAL Lombardia) and HR players(DailyInternship which is a European Job board focusing on new graduates).
JOBIRI won 7 national and international awards: among these, we were finalists of the Social Innovation Tournament 2018, competition promoted by the EU Investment Bank Institute, and European finalist at MIT - Inclusive Innovation Challenge 2018. Jobiri won the Marzotto Award, the most important Italian competition for innovative entrepreneurs; In January 2018 “Welfare what a business!”, Italian competition for social impacting startup. We have been selected by the Municipality of Águeda in Portugal to support them in fighting youth unemployment and attract youngsters to the local manufacturing industry. To date we raised +200K in capital and services and we had a first seed investor, Area Science Park (the leading technological park in Italy, sponsored by the Italian Ministry of universities and research) which gave us the capital to transform a business impacting idea into this impacting social startup.
What we learned
Jobseekers are often left on their own during the job search with career-supporting institutions including employment centers, schools, universities and staffing firms helping a small portion of total candidates due to traditional approaches (1-to-1 career support delivery model) and operational limits (physical limits and inadequate resources compared to the real demand of these services). The prevalence of traditional career guidance delivery models (no extended exploitation of data, close to zero investment on AI for candidates, strong focus on brick and mortar operations and for those online players, robust coverage of specific verticals rather than the full the job search path) limits the reach or the effectiveness of career support services. Institutions must evolve and JOBIRI is here to help.
What's next for Jobiri, the first AI based digital career advisor
Our technology and business model are showing to be scalable at the European level. The rollout in different geographical locations (Italy and Portugal) and the type of users supported (jobseekers and institutions) is proof of how much JOBIRI’s technology is scalable and adaptable to the needs of different users. Further evidences arise from the interest showed by various international potential clients and partner at EU level. Also, JOBIRI’s technology is constantly improving over time. As our technology is based on machine learning algorithms, the more jobseekers browse the platform, the better and more tailored are feedbacks and job search path suggestions.
Our ambition is to provide a digital career advisor for everyone, so no one is left behind. We aim to become the leading provider of artificial intelligence technologies in the European employment and career support market at the end of 2023.