TechSpark Connect

Our solution is a diversity recruitment database for technical positions that allows job/internship seekers to apply and be considered for these positions without gender or racial biases by anonymizing their information. Our solution once scaled will be able to serve job/internship seekers worldwide who register on our platform.

TechSpark Connect is a diversity recruitment database specifically geared towards marginalized individuals in the tech sector which includes females. Job and internship seekers in our target market will be able to view job postings and forward their interest to us. We then collate the top 5 candidates who have expressed interest, anonymize their information which will include their resumes, Github and Twitter activities, and snippets of previously written code and send this data to the companies who posted these jobs, and if there is mutual interest, we initiate a connection in the form of an interview and allow both parties to continue from there.

Our solution addresses the challenge question by ensuring that females along with other marginalized minorities in the tech sector can be considered on equal terms as their counterparts. It ensures that they are not discriminated against for opportunities because of things out of their control like skin color, nationality, and/or gender. It gives them the power to be considered on equal terms for positions that they are qualified and interested in which in turn leads to greater financial empowerment.

TechSpark Connect has the power to be impactful on a global front if scaled because people from all nooks and crannies of the world will be able to be considered for job openings without things like how their name sounds, what accent they have, or being unable to fit into the 'bro culture' being hindrances to their successes.

The problem our solution solves is the unconscious bias that is apparent in hiring processes for technical positions. While there is a diversity wave crashing on the tech industry, making recruiters more watchful of these biases, there are still some less noticeable ones such as hiring  a black male over a black female for example that are harder to notice and control as a result. This is where TechSpark Connect comes in. By removing the possibility of hirers and recruiters being biased, it leads to more diversity in the work place, leading to more females, and hence greater female empowerment.

The Orchestra community had a problem with gender biases, and a study done by the NBER in 1997 showed that blind auditioning increased the number of female musicians in orchestras around the U.S. 

Also, in a review of empirical studies on the effect of anonymous hiring processes in some European countries in 2010, Ulf Rinne of IZA World of Labor found that “discrimination appears to be strongest when employers decide Interviewees.” He found that anonymous applications were effective at encouraging a more diverse set of applicants, and anonymous hiring led to more minorities and women getting offered interviews.

Our solution will help to bring a much needed diversity to the tech sector, and the beneficiaries of our solution while primarily females will also include other marginalized individuals in the tech sector. Our solution will be deployed to them in the form of a web app and later a mobile application that they can register for our service on for free.

Track the number of paying customers - 1000 companies hire through our platform

Track the number of hires that are initiated through our platform - 1000 hires for jobs and internships made through our platform

Analyze hiring data and track the demographic of the completed hires. - At least 50% of hires on our platform are female

Our solutions innovativeness comes from not just creating a platform that contains diverse candidates such as some of our competitors have done, but also anonymizing their data so that less noticeable biases can be prevented against. 

The use of our platform is centered on the sufferers of the problem we hope to solve because not only is our team comprised of minorities; a female and two African-Americans, but our platform is also free to use for the people we aim to serve. Our platform is 100% focused on alleviating the problem of this demographic in the most painless way for them possible which is why even our registration form is short and user-centric.

Our solution will be deployed in the form of a web application and later a mobile application free for download. Companies using our service will pay us a monthly subscription fee while job-seekers on our platform will be able to access and take advantage of our services for free.

We plan to apply to student focused vc firms such as RDV and DRF to fund ourselves through our pilot phase, and then programs like MassChallenge, and more mature VC funding as we scale our solution.

Factors limiting the success of our solution are generating enough traction to attract users of our competitors to us as an early stage company run by students without previous entrepreneurial experience. 

https://www.facebook.com/techsprk/

We are applying to solve for a number of reasons. The first is the credibility that it will give to our project by being accepted into Solve. It will also provide us with mentors that can help us refine some of our rough patches and plug us into useful networks that could be pivotal to the success of our product. We would also love to be able to take advantage of the community of experts that can help us solve any challenges that we inevitably run into as we try to build our product.

We are not quite sure if this counts as a partnership, but we will be attending the 2017 Clinton Global Initiative University this fall where we will further develop TechSpark Connect. We've also been working with NSBE on a regional and national level to get their members on our platform.

Jopwell, Teamable and other non-diversity focused job sites like LInkedIn, Monster, and Indeed.