Career Bridge

Career mobility is a challenge for marginalized workers. They either lack positive job market signals like those of four-year degrees; are tied to negative stigmas from discrimination and bias; or, they lack relevant work experience. In the absence of real information on individual capability, an overreliance on imperfect signals has become the norm for current talent search systematically marginalizing many. Canduit and Xopolis are teaming up to disrupt these talent pipelines with a solution that helps career movers chart their own paths to opportunity and access the specific training needed to bridge competency gaps. Hundreds of students currently benefit from Canduit’s project-based learning in an ecosystem connecting 6 HBCUs, 10,000 Alumni, 30 education partners, and 15 Fortune 500 companies. Bringing this solution to scale will unlock critical new capabilities for tracking and aligning local employer needs with worker preferences, building an ecosystem of opportunity.  

Inefficiencies in the job market arise from imperfect information shared between employers and job seekers. Employers often complain they cannot trust what candidates say in their resumes and job seekers often complain that they do not know what opportunities are available for them. Consequently, both employers and candidates prioritize referrals as a signal for quality skills or jobs they can trust and over 65 percent of new hires are based on referrals (SHRM, 2017). In such a system, the better networked individuals and better branded businesses benefit disproportionately more from their connections in the job market. Additionally, an over-reliance on professional and social networks also becomes a source of bias and discrimination in the job market. Our solution addresses this problem by increasing the quality and verifiability of information available to employers on job seekers while also broadening the search space for job seekers to find and pursue career opportunities. Our goal is to create new access points into the job market for those individuals traditionally marginalized from opportunity in a growing economy. To do so, we partner with local employers, colleges, universities, high schools, bootcamps, as well as online education programs to provide an end-to-end solution for lifelong learning along career pathways that can evolve.

The Career Bridge is developed in collaboration between Canduit and Xopolis. It is a web platform for project-based learning where new career entrants and alumni work on enterprise-sponsored projects to gain relevant experience. Job seekers use Career Bridge to explore local career pathways, identify their competency gaps along each pathway, and chart a training roadmap that will make them more competitive to local employers. We partner with local employers, colleges, universities, high schools, bootcamps, as well as online education programs to connect career movers with different upskilling opportunities. In addition, we work with alumni and enterprise clients to develop projects tailored for upskilling niche and high-demand competencies. Our solution is supported by a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funded World of Work (WoW) Skills-to-Tasks ontology that provides a high-level of detail on local in-demand competencies, real-time career pathing, and competency gap analysis. Yet, our solution is high-touch in that it drives engagement between career changers, employers, alumni, and educators. Features of our solution include; an online project marketplace and virtual workspace (where students can work on projects collaboratively with companies through online project management, communication, and feedback tools), predictive career analytics, and competency-based matching to jobs and upskilling opportunities.

Our target population is the marginally employed, unemployed, and new entrants into the workforce. These groups are under-networked in the job market and rely on institutional resources, such as workforce boards and career counselors to connect to jobs. We participated in the national I-CORPS program through the National Science Foundation (NSF) where we conducted 117 in-person interviews across the US with job seekers, hiring managers, recruiters, career counselors, curriculum developers, and directors of workforce and economic development boards. Job seekers in these groups overwhelmingly reported being constrained by time, resources, and location to upskill and pursue a career of their choice. They felt their potential was undervalued because more often than not employers told them they did not have the right experience. They also felt having career preferences were a luxury not afforded them. Our solution is to empower career changers with competencies so they pursue opportunities as job-seekers and less as job-takers. Current students using our platform report greater retention of course material, enhanced understanding of the working style and recruitment process for different industries and jobs, and more confidence in their leadership, communication, and teamwork skills. Fifty percent of our projects are designed for full-time jobs or internships.

Our solution is aimed at re-wiring underdeveloped parts of the job market that are excluding people from new opportunities in the 21st Century. We focus on competency-based learning and career-pathing to increase access to high-quality, affordable learning, skill-building, and training opportunities for displaced and unemployed workers. We are partnered with 6 HBCUs, 10,000 Alumni, 30 education partners, and 15 Fortune 500 companies to connect our target groups to new opportunities. Beyond the technical advance of the competency-based analytics used in our solution, we deliver value as ecosystem builders, building bridges to careers outside of the traditional four-year degree pathways.

At Canduit, we have 4 full-time employees, 3 contractors, and 2 interns.

At Xopolis, we have 3 full-time employees, 5 part-time employees, 2 research contractors, and 3 graduate research assistants.

Our organizational culture values a sense of belonging and providing a shared vision of professional growth where team members can thrive. Bias in the current job market is institutionalized and embedded in current talent pipelines that favor big business and branded educational programs. As a resource-constrained high-technology startup requiring niche high-demand skills, we have remained competitive by searching for and connecting with talent bigger businesses often overlook. All co-founders come from a diverse background and have overcome obstacles related to gender, race, and socioeconomic status. Our entire mission is to connect first-generation, Black, and brown students to opportunities. By encouraging flexible work-from-home arrangements, we are able to incorporate and onboard talent from different geographies and nationalities, without regard to accessibility barriers. We also use skill assessments and other meritocratic and more scientifically proven evaluation methods during the hiring process and seek to partner with DEI organizations for candidate referrals.

Available job search and matching sites rely heavily on post-and-search capabilities. Many attempts have been made to transition the job search process beyond this rudimentary capability to better represent the complexity of job search in today’s fast-paced technology driven economy. However, they have failed to address bias and increase access. Notably, LinkedIn relies on peer-recommendation and network linkages that are susceptible to the “bubble” effect, where job market opportunities revealed to the user are conditioned on the network of which the user is already a part. CareerBuilder, focuses on job titles for job matching and career pathing. However, job titles are imprecise representations of work leading to inefficient matching and contributing to higher turnover. Startups such as Leap.ai apply text-based machine learning and AI algorithms on resume data. However, these solutions have shown limited efficacy as they do not capture the geographic, industry, or employer specificity of work. Large organizations such as IBM, AWS, and Facebook have developed internal solutions to track worker skills and behaviors as part of their strategic workforce planning initiatives. However, these technologies do not translate to career pathing outside the company, over a worker’s work history. Our technology has, (1) capability for direct skills to task matching; (2) career pathing that is region specific and evolving in real-time; (3) ability to cluster individuals by competencies to identify local communities of practise; and, (4) confidentiality till the point of interview for candidates, unlocking their potential for passive hiring.

Xopolis developed our core technology is the Word of Work (WoW) skills-to-task ontology that tracks the evolution of work, funded by an SBIR Phase 1 award. This technology enables the transformation and aggregation of high-resolution data on work along multiple dimensions in real-time. The WoW ontology disaggregates all work experiences and job descriptions into dense representations of job skills, knowledge, abilities, tasks, and technologies and analyzes large quantities of data to build inferences on work preferences and behavioral traits associated with learning on-the-job. Aggregated across employer-to-employer job flows the ontology also provides new insights into employer preferences and employment patterns. This helps job seekers explore different career pathways based on career moves made by others of similar profiles in their regions. This technology also enables users to map career paths of interest, and our algorithms extract a competency-gap, a match quality, as well as the anticipated training needs for the proposed career path.

Our technology was used to identify regional competency gaps and career paths in Global Trade in the Los Angeles area. The Director of Employer Engagement for Global Trade at Long Beach City college approached us with the challenge of defining global trade career opportunities in their region. There was broad consensus amongst educators in the region that global trade is an important sector in the Los Angeles economy and thrives around the regional ports. However, identifying which jobs are specifically global trade and developing relevant curriculum has been a challenge because current approaches for job analysis cannot differentiate between Global Trade jobs, and Supply Chain and Logistics jobs, or International Business and Entrepreneurship jobs. To solve this problem, we applied our WoW ontology to map a detailed competency comparison between jobs in companies trading globally and those not trading globally in the Los Angeles region. In doing so, we were able to distinguish features of global trade jobs across the high, middle, and low-skill spectrum, even identify technical preferences of global trading companies relative to their non-trading industry peers. This research, although addressing a narrowly targeted problem, validated the capabilities and usefulness of our technology and its capacity to open new dimensions of performance and capability.    

We are ecosystem builders leveraging technology and expertise to build new connections in human-centric systems. Effective and lasting change in the workforce ecosystem requires extensive buy-in and a high degree of trust from stakeholders. Our goal is to scale our project-based learning solutions using advanced AI to network and connect different ecosystem stakeholders along new value chains. Specifically, we have a technology that translates standard resumes and job postings into competency-based profiles. This unleashes new capabilities and possibilities for how we map career paths, determine upskilling curriculum, and even identify workers according to their expertise, and not just their job title. 

Nonetheless, change must be iterative if the transition to a new job market is to be inclusive. Our project-based learning solutions are designed to help fill gaps, validate, test, and scale micro-solutions, and create a system where information on employer needs can translate into an upskilling curriculum. Currently, this process takes months while our solution allows for competency-gaps to be assessed in real-time, based on actual demand and supply. As ecosystem builders we value partnerships and building an extensive network of information sharing that brings together employers, job seekers, educators, and regulators around a solution that is designed to increase access to career opportunities for the local workforce.

Our technical activities focus on identifying the needs of employers, the preferences of workers, the competency gaps where the two meet, available local upskilling resources to fill these gaps, and gaps in upskilling resources. Our ecosystem building activities include leveraging our project-based learning approach to engage local employers and educators to fill the gaps in upskilling.

In the short-term, these practices translate to increased hires of local career movers by local employers as well as longer retention rates and lower turnover from skills-mismatch. In the medium-term, educators align their curriculum closer to the needs of the local labor market rather than to national trends. In the long-term, we look forward to a job market that is competency driven and provides broader opportunities for workers with the right skills rather than the right branding.         

Our impact goals are related to ecosystem outcomes and metrics that validate our solution is driving value by connecting people to opportunity. Specifically, within the next five years we want to; (1) establish a brand for our career profiles; (2) establish local training pipeline that translate employer demand to local curriculum; (3) connect 100,000 small and medium enterprises to our talent pipelines; (4) extend our solution nationwide; (5) become a leading source of information and analytics on career lifecycles across the U.S.

Organizational and Financial barriers - This proposal is a collaboration between Canduit and Xopolis. Both small businesses are looking at a unique opportunity to combine their expertise and capabilities to scale a solution that will help reimagine career pathways and career opportunity. However, scaling a solution has its challenges both technically and organizationally. A first challenge is to find the financial resources to support the development of integrating the two systems. A second challenge is the reorganisation of our resources around this one solution. 

Market barriers - We require a robust set of career profiles in our system before employers will engage at scale. We expect to achieve this scale through users at workforce boards and anticipate customizing our solution for the needs and preferences of their clients. This will require some design time leading up to deploying the solution.

Cultural barriers - An important barrier is to help employers overcome any stigma associated with workers moving through workforce boards. Our career profiles must deliver value to employers in a space where traditional job market signals are either lacking or negatively associated. 

Overcoming organizational and financial barriers - We are seeking funding from MIT Solve to support the development of our solution from a working prototype to a full product. Organizationally, we have outlined a path for our collaboration around fully developing and deploying the Career Bridge, in terms of shared resources and delineated tasks and scope. But we are also interested in pairing with mentors and the management expertise in the MIT Solve network to help us identify the unknowns and de-risk our process. 

Overcoming market barriers - Matt Burgess (Xopolis) on our lead team is also our lead designer. His expertise and design process helps ensure we are building products and developing solutions that actually add value to users. 

Overcoming cultural barriers - We will spend considerable time and energy networking with employers and educational programs, sharing research findings and developing a strong informational resource around local career pathways and upskilling opportunities. We will also network with other local educational non-profits and other organizations, including K12, to drive buy-in and generate a sense of community around competency-based career pathways.

Process/Steps - First, onboard users through workforce boards letting them explore career paths and connect with training already available; Second, output high demand career paths and gaps in locally available training; Third, convene meetings between (a) employers facing highest competency gaps, (b) local educators providing related training to design projects that fill gaps; Fourth, deploy new projects through Canduit platform; Fifth, successful projects get adopted into local curriculum.

The Career Bridge is designed to track life-long learning and upskilling and we want to track outcomes for users over their entire employment lifecycle, from their first job until they retire. We also want to track outcomes for employers using our system, and in the aggregate study of these systems help employers align their skills needs, technology stacks, and even build new value chains. We want to collect data on what impact our solution will have on technology dissemination, innovation, building local communities of practice, and innovation and entrepreneurship.

Our solution is a collaboration between Canduit and Xopolis, both for-profit small and young businesses. Canduit and Xopolis have developed complementary products that serve a shared vision on transitioning the job market to deliver inclusive opportunities for all. Canduit has four years of expertise building relationships with stakeholders in the new talent ecosystem. Xopolis has a technology that reduces the time it takes to map competencies, career paths, and identify training needs. We identified an opportunity to collaborate and are proposing a solution that combines both our approaches in a solution that can deliver systemic change. 

With a Master’s in Human Resource Management / Organizational Development, Greg brings 15+ years of experience running his own recruitment firm, which reached over $1M in revenue in the first year, and has worked in recruitment for F500 companies, so he understands the employer perspective on attracting, assessing, hiring, and retaining high-quality diverse talent. 

Leah brings a background in social entrepreneurship, having founded social ventures that have raised $5M, graduated from Wharton School of Business, worked in strategy/operations for companies like DoorDash, and conducted extensive research on the future of work through her involvement with the UN and G20. As a first-generation college student, she also empathizes first-hand with challenges faced by Canduit’s target student demographic.

Lokesh holds a PhD in Public Policy from George Mason University where he studied the evolutionary life cycles of entrepreneurial ecosystems. During this time he was part of a research consortium on the Future of Work that hosted workshops at the Santa Fe Institute, Palo Alto (Innovation 4 Jobs), and MIT Media Labs. Following these workshops, Lokesh founded Xopolis to find a market solution to disconnects in the jobs market. He participated in the national I-CORPS program and conducted extensive customer research on the workforce ecosystem. Xopolis was subsequently also awarded the SBIR Phase 1 award to develop our WoW skills-to-task ontology

With a Masters in Design, Matt’s attention is forever focused on progress through the uncovering and targeting of meaningful outcomes through work with The College Board, UMUC, and the Interaction Design Foundation.

We currently partner with 30+ universities in the US, including many HBCUs and Minority-Serving Institutions like Grambling University, Howard University, Phoenix College, and Norfolk State University, which provide access to their student bodies and help promote Canduit internally. 

We also work with many large organizations with a commitment to DEI and are piloting with large organizations, like Marriott, Uber, Ashoka, and Morgan Stanley, which supply student projects and use Canduit as a comprehensive talent solution for internships and entry-level positions.

We have been supported by the Nebraskan Government, 757 Accelerate in Hampton Roads,  the TechDiversity Accelerator with Tampa Bay Wave and the Nielsen Foundation, and Acumen's CivicX Accelerator (Future of Work). These organizations help us identify mentors, universities, and corporate contacts. 

In addition, we work with other networks and job boards like The Intern Group, FirstJob, Project Management Institute, etc. and Chambers of Commerce to access small to medium-sized businesses at scale.

We have a B2B subscription business model. Employers pay a base annual subscription to search and match with our database of candidate competency profiles. Premium subscriptions unlock features with additional career analytics as well as access to our project-based learning solutions. Educational programs pay a per-student subscription fee for use of our platform, including educator and student access to our project marketplace and project management tools. We also offer project-course integrations for employers to have their projects integrated into coursework at one of more partner institutions. Such integrations have been modeled as revenue-shares between institutions and Canduit, and distributed as scholarships to students. In addition, we provide project-based competency-based analytics and research services.      

Our path to financial sustainability is through employer subscriptions and growing our partnerships and network. We are seeking initial funding to move our prototype and pilot product to full scale following which we will be able to onboard users through the workforce board partners and connect with employers to establish new talent pipelines. Delivering value and building trust are critical to our vision and validation of our solution relies on our growing user base and increased engagement with employers.

(Canduit) Start-Up Chile - $70,000

(Canduit) 757 Accelerate - $20,000 

(Canduit) LaunchLNK - $25,000

(Canduit) Nebraskan Government - $50,000

(Canduit) UTEC Ventures (convertible note) - $25,000

(Xopolis) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 - Xopolis - $220,000

(Xopolis) Global Trade Middle-Skills Career Opportunities in the Los Angeles Region

(Xopolis) Research Award, Small Business Administration - The Challenges and Contributions of African American Entrepreneurs 

(Xopolis) Small Business in the Time of COVID19 - The Impact of COVID19 on California Small Businesses 

(Xopolis) California Small Businesses Development Center Economic Impact Dashboards

(Xopolis) Other workforce, economic, and entrepreneurial ecosystems development research and policy activities.

We are hoping to raise $500,000 through follow-on SBIR funding or impact investors by May 2021. We already have a few investors interested and are reviewing next steps.

In 2021, we anticipate direct costs of customization to workforce boards, deployment, and maintenance of the Career Bridge at $185,000, which includes project hours, data and infrastructure, and additional personnel costs related directly to the solution. In addition, we allocate $25,000 for travel and customer engagement. Engineering expenses 2 FT or 3 PT (Developer and/or AWS Engineer) $150k @50/hr (3000 hrs) 
AWS (data & infrastructure) - $8400 @$700/mo (medium instance)
Customer Engagement $15000
Travel $10000
Estimated expenses ~$183k

We are applying for the opportunity to pilot and scale our collaborative solution with workforce boards. We want to make an impact and believe this MIT Solve Challenge provides the best venue to further our vision of a better more inclusive job market at scale. 

We are two minority and women-owned high-technology innovative small businesses looking to combine our resources and expertise to deliver solutions that can dramatically transition the job market for the better. We want the job market to embody the same opportunities for everyone that we have had the fortune to access. But this change requires both internal reorganization as well as external ecosystem building. We have come so far through many sleepless nights, bootstrapping, and learning-by-doing. We are seeking technical mentorship and expertise that can de-risk our organizational growth while helping scale our solution in the market.

Furthermore, collaboration with the Morgridge Family Foundation and New Profit will help boost our ecosystem building efforts through connection to people and organizations committed to this same cultural ecosystem change.    

Finally, the financial support provided by this award will enable us to embark on this collaborative venture by allowing us to allocate time and personnel directly to the development of the Career Bridge for workforce users, especially in the early months before we have revenues tied to this specific project. 

We would be seeking management best practices advice from board members and advisors. Specifically, what are the best options for managing and furthering this collaboration. Our current shared understanding already allows us to move forward with the solution, our board members and advisors bring valuable new information and expertise that can facilitate our growth while anticipating any pitfalls in the process. 

We would also look to our board members and advisors to help expand our network and connect us with key players in the ecosystem, but also to establish ourselves as a key player in the ecosystem. Branding is important in this space and we are looking to the partnerships developed through MIT Solve to improve our visibility and widen the readership of our related research. 

We want to partner with educators to establish pipelines for timely curriculum development. These include local community colleges, educational programs, online learning organizations such as Udacity and Khan Academy. 

We want to partner with educational regulators such as the State Education Department and other ecosystem influencers such as UNESCO for establishing processes along certification development and providing validation around the competency mapping, training, and upskilling pipelines. 

We want to partner with occupational data and skills data organizations such as O*NET of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Data at Work so that the granular data we collect can better inform policy and improve the overall quality of information available to the ecosystem.  

Finally, we also want to partner with nonprofits such as Opportunity@Work that have a shared vision and are working to solve similar problems in tandem so we can share resources and collaborate rather than compete in solving social problems.