Catalyte Talent Platform

Aptitude is everywhere. Opportunity is not. Catalyte Talent Platform uses big data and predictive analytics to discover individuals, regardless of background, who have the innate ability and cognitive agility to be great software engineers, trains them in enterprise software development and employs them in family-sustaining, 21st century knowledge economy jobs.

While a Harvard Law Fellow, Catalyte’s founder understood that many people have the aptitude, but not the opportunity, to be part of the emerging knowledge economy. He developed an algorithm, the Catalyte Talent Platform, that can identify individuals, regardless of background, who have the innate ability and cognitive agility to be great software engineers. This creates the possibility to expand employment in technology fields to disadvantaged groups previous excluded from these 21st century positions.

Catalyte retrains the American workforce for employment in the fast-growing and in-demand technology fields of application development and software engineering. By expanding employment opportunities to anyone with software development ability, Catalyte creates a new base of knowledge workers who will both fuel growth in their local communities and create the technology that will power our modern economy.

Because our application and training process focuses solely on aptitude and not biased societal markers (income, wealth, education, age, sex, race, etc.), our employees mirror the demographics of the larger community. This shows that aptitude is indeed equally distributed and that underprivileged youth, regardless of background, have an equal chance at thriving in the 21st century workforce with Catalyte.

If scaled, we can expand these opportunities to anyone interested in them, both here in the United States and potentially around the globe. Imagine an economy driven by the idea that skills and a demonstrated ability to perform targeted tasks are more important than resumes in determining whom to hire. This could fill the void left by the disappearance of reliable, family-sustaining “blue collar” jobs. Adapted for “white collar” technology jobs, this idea can provide a path to the middle class (and beyond) for millions of families.

Underprivileged youth have the same cognitive aptitude as their privileged peers, but lack the opportunity and access to technology training, education and jobs. For example, in 2015 less than 13% of AP Computer Science test takers were minorities. Only 3% of tech employees are black.

In order to create an equitable economy, where employment is based on a true skills meritocracy, we must eliminate barriers to technology training and education, and transform hiring to eliminate conscious and subconscious biases. If not, the 21st century workforce will remain highly-stratified, segregated and inequitable, further disenfranchising the underprivileged.

Since its founding, Catalyte has employed approximately 1,100 software engineers discovered through our big data and predictive analytics platform. The demographics of those hires are commensurate to the general population, including 13 percent African American and 64 percent without a four-year college degree. This is far more diverse than the tech industry at large.

As we continue to scale and enter new communities, we expect these numbers to remain consistent. This mean groups previously underrepresented in technology fields will have equal opportunity for training and employment in 21st century careers.

Our ability to find, train and employ disadvantaged groups in the expanding field of software engineering will create economically independent individuals and families, vibrant and more prosperous communities and transform entire cities.

Anyone who lacks traditional social signifiers of potential (income, wealth, education, age, sex, race, economic class, job history or alumni connections) will benefit from this solution, as it’s based on objective data, not subjective analysis.

As we expand into cities with high economic inequality, we need continued and increased outreach to disadvantaged communities for this solution to be fully realized.

Open development centers in four new cities in the next 18 months. - Find additional communities where underprivileged youth lack access to 21st century technology jobs.

Enrollment numbers in our training program, fed by Catalyte Talent Platform, will meet this goal. - Train 25-50 individuals per month from underrepresented demographics in software development and engineering.

Within 30 days of graduation from our training, these individuals are deployed on a development team working on client projects. - Employ 20-40 individuals per month from underrepresented demographics in software development and engineering.

Other technology training programs lack concrete, positive outcomes, are based on subjective measures for enrollment and employment, have an average cost of $11,500 and don’t guarantee meaningful employment upon graduation. Catalyte is based on 15 years of objective, data-driven analysis of who can be a great software engineer.

Because of the maturity and confidence of this big data/predictive analytics model, we can provide training at no cost to participants, and upon successful completion of the course, employ graduates in in-demand positions as enterprise software developers. Our employees are part of teams designing innovative software for Fortune 500 companies.

This technology is designed to illuminate the abilities and elevate the economic possibilities of communities that the fourth industrial revolution has left behind. Analytic hiring levels the playing field. It allows people with qualified ability to compete on equal footing.

Populations who made up the backbone of blue collar manufacturing jobs, many of whom lack the formal education or traditional work experience that resumes highlight, can now put their innate abilities to work in fields that once seemed unattainable. This can make transformational differences for underserved demographics and communities. To date, we’ve extended these possibilities to over 1,100 developers.

Our solution is currently available to target communities. However, to increase its impact on underserved youth, we need additional partners (both for profit, nonprofit and government organizations) to raise awareness about the solution’s existence. T

he assessment and training are always free, and therefore open and affordable to anyone who knows they exist. The more help we have in increasing awareness, the more people we can help move from working to middle class and beyond.

Catalyte currently operates as a profitable IT services company. Our clients contract with the company to develop cutting-edge, digital software solutions. This work is performed with our own employees, who were discovered, trained and hired using the big data/predictive analytics-driven Catalyte Talent Platform.

Our goal through Solve is to scale this ability to both hire internally and create avenues where we can find and train more software engineers to be placed directly with external organizations (private sector, nonprofits and government).

Two main factors limit our ability to succeed:

1. Enterprises that are unwilling to embrace analytics-based hiring and that cling to discriminatory resumes. Without this, the talent created has no place to work.

2. Public awareness of this solution/program. People must realize that they have the potential to succeed even without traditional social markers of success.

We are applying to Solve to help scale this solution throughout the United State, and possibly internationally.

For this solution to have maximum effect on the economic potential of underserved populations we need cooperation and alignment between the private sector and government. We need enterprises to understand what they gain from hiring in this manner, and governments to promote workforce development that is proven, and outcome-driven.

BLocal: BLocal is a commitment by Baltimore-area businesses to leverage their collective influence to help strengthen the city and create opportunities for underserved Baltimoreans.

Client partners: Nike, Under Armour, AAA, Deloitte, Cambia Health, Microsoft

IBM, Deloitte, Accenture, Cognizant, RSI, Oracle, Capgemini, Wipro, Infosys, TCS, Nexient