HRAdvisor

The problem this solution solves is under the challenge Financial Inclusion. A major problem in many Western economies is that of discrimination in the labour market. It has been a stylised fact of the U.S. economy, for example, that the unemployment rate of black Americans is typically twice as high as those of white Americans. Similar trends are reported in other economies such as the United Kingdom. Given that most people earn their income and acquire wealth from the job that they work at, this discrepancy is a major hindrance to the wealth acquisition of black people and people of colour. In her book The Colour of Money: Black Banks and The Racial Wealth Gap, Professor Mehrsa Baradan noted that: "Over a third of black families have significantly less wealth than whites". 

The discrepancy in unemployment rates stems, among some other reasons, from discrimination and this works in two ways: the first is that black people and those who are ethnic minorities find it harder to get a job because they are denied getting a job during the application process. This can happen, for instance, if an interviewer suspects that the applicant is a black person or ethnic minority. Some studies show that having a name like "Jamal" can make someone less employable than "Greg" even if the qualifications for both individuals are the same. The second reason that the unemployment rate between the two groups are divergent is that even when black people and ethnic minorities do get that job, they are more likely to be fired than those who are white. The expression sometimes used to describe this phenomenon is that black people are "last hired, first fired" and it has found its way into some economics textbook classics such as Nobel laureate Edmund S. Phelps' 1972 book Inflation Policy and Unemployment Theory: The Cost-Benefit Approach to Monetary Planning. 

The result of this is that black people and ethnic minorities face greater obstacles to acquiring wealth than white people. That is to say, it is more difficult for those from minority backgrounds to look for work because they are unsure about whether the firm they have applied to exhibits (un)conscious bias against them and furthermore, it is more difficult for those from minority backgrounds to have a feeling of job stability knowing that they are more likely to be fired than those of white people.

HRAdvisor is a program and app that a jobseeker who is from a minority background can install on their desktop/laptop/phone. It serves both those from communities from "the margins" who are looking for work as well as those who are currently in work. The end user types in the name of the job and the name of the firm and the program informs the end user about the likelihood of being accepted for work if they are currently unemployed as well as informs the end user about the likelihood of being fired for work if they are currently in work. The program is built using C++ and leverages statistics to help inform the user about these two important metrics in the labour market. 

It has been featured in The Daily Mail as well as in the 2018 Peter Drucker Forum.

The target population of HRAdvisor are those who are looking for work as well as those who are in what is called "precarious employment": this describes the situation where tenure in employment is tenuous and not secure. Those who fall under such categories are usually ethnic minorities as well as women. 

My name is Babatunde Onabajo and I am well-positioned to deliver this solution because of my academic credentials and personal experience. I have a degree in BSc Economics from Cardiff University as well as an MSc Brazil in Global Perspective from King's College London. From both institutions I acquired an intimate knowledge of the theory of how labour markets work, as well as a strong understanding of statistics. I also have intimate and personal knowledge of unemployment, having experienced it myself in 2018. Although I have an economic background, I now work as a programmer and have even been named by NASA as a Subject Matter Expert on Open Software. I am passionate about how technology can impact communities, and have written extensively on the subject such as my paper that looked into the ethics of airbrushing. My Github can be found here. 

This is a prototype rather than a concept in that we have developed a beta version of the program which is currently being tested before being published on the Google Play Store for users to try out. Furthermore, it has already been featured prominently in the media. 

The program and app currently serves the following regions: United States, Canada, France, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland. There is a particular emphasis on the United States, particularly with regards to the African-American community, who experience difficulties with the labour market and have done so for many years (the unemployment rate for black New Yorkers, for example, is approximately 12.2% whilst for white New Yorkers the unemployment rate is around 1.3%).

We are applying to Solve as we are passionate about highlighting the issue of structural unemployment that affects those from ethnic minority backgrounds. 

HRAdvisor is innovative in that, to date, the job application process is very much outdated: people submit job applications and twiddle their fingers and hope they might be successful. Furthermore, those who are in work go to work every day never knowing if that day will be the last day at their job. HRAdvisor leverages the power of statistics to inform those in the labour market about 1) the probability they will succeed at applying to a firm and 2) the probability they will be fired at the firm if they are already working there. It can be seen, in some respects, as something like a "weather forecast" for the labour market: in the same way it is vital for many people to know what the weather will be tomorrow, HRAdvisor informs users about important probabilities with regards to the labour market. 

Over the next year we plan to launch the program as well as app on the major app platforms - Google Play Store, Apple App Store, Amazon AppStore as well as the Huawei AppGallery Connect - and we also hope to drum up more media reports about the program. It is hoped that over the next 5 years the program will lead to a significant reduction in the unemployment gap between those who are white and those who are ethnic minorities and this will be established by economists in their findings. This will hopefully go some way into ensuring that ethnic minorities are in a better position to acquire wealth as well as to minimise surprising income shocks. 

The main way progress is being measured are the various unemployment statistics collected by the agencies in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Canada as well as Australia. There is, at this point in time, a greater focus on the United States. 

HRAdvisor creates change by providing jobseekers and those currently in work with valuable information on the likelihood of being successful with a job application as well as the likelihood they may lose a job on any particular day. This generates change because it resolves what economists call "asymmetric information" in the labour market: the situation where one party has or possesses more information than another party, leading to suboptimal economic outcomes. Ethnic minorities face difficulties in the labour market on two fronts. On one front, they do not know how likely it is they will simply be discriminated against when they make a job application, taking up time and prolonging their unemployment spell. On the other hand, even when they are employed, they face a higher risk of losing their job. HRAdvisor therefore rectifies this asymmetric information in the labour market, helping ethnic minorities to acquire wealth, as well as to reduce racial disparities in society. 

The program/app utilises statistics to inform the end user the probability of succeeding in applying for a job at a particular company or, alternatively, the probability of being fired on a particular day at a given job at a particular company. The main way this is done is through a branch of statistics known as "categorical analysis", which is a form of regression analysis but unlike traditional regression analysis which has the dependent variable (y) as a continuous variable it can only take 2 values with 1 indicating certainty and 0 indicating impossible. The program/app takes a range of variables and outputs the probability for the benefit of the end user. This helps reduce frictions in the labour market as people know where exactly to go to look for work as well as when to leave a firm when the likelihood of losing it is high; this benefits ethnic minorities who are structurally disadvantaged in the labour market. 

The evidence that it works can be found from the following:

The Diamond, Mortensen and Pissarides Nobel: Search and market frictions - Prof. Barbara Petrongolo

We at ChurchMapped Limited are passionate about diversity. Babatunde Onabajo is currently writing a book titled Corporate Social Responsibility in a post-George Floyd World which was shortlisted in the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Bracken Bower Prize, which examines how corporate social responsibility initiatives shifted in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd. Babatunde Onabajo is also active in participation with the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) which is an organisation that seeks to strengthen the relationship between Asia and Europe. 

ChurchMapped Limited is an existing company already, and creates amazing technology solutions as is clear from reviews left by customers on our TrustPilot page. It is envisaged that HRAdvisor, a product we are in the process of building, will be offered for free to those looking for work and in work, and will obtain funding from businesses seeking to advertise on the platform. 

We aim to fund HRAdvisor from our existing financial resources, and hope that it will be financially self-sustaining within 5 years from the revenue gained from businesses that choose to advertise on the platform. The program will always be free for the end user. 

As we are an existing and successful company, HRAdvisor is being funded through our existing financial resources.