RiseKit's vision is that job seekers will have equal access to employment opportunities no matter what zip code they grew up in.
The Chicago startup, which helps companies manage and work with community organizations to diversify their hiring pools, recently secured $4.75 million in funding to build out its platform.
The funding came from a range of investors, including philanthropists, venture capital firms and social impact investors including Stand Together Ventures Lab, Sylvie Legere and Steve Sarowitz.
"I made some mistakes to get to this point, hired some of the wrong people," Matt Strauss, RiseKit co-founder and CEO, told Chicago Inno. "Steve Cerrowitz, one of our biggest investors, believed in us because when he first started his business, he made some wrong decisions [too]."
RiseKit is designed to help marginalized communities such as veterans, homeless people, ex-cons, primary caregivers and immigrants overcome employment barriers and land jobs.
Using RiseKit's software, which can be integrated with existing applicant tracking systems, government agencies and employment service providers, employers can track candidates throughout the hiring process. The startup is built to help other companies scale their community hiring and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and find untapped diverse talent through community organizations.
With its new funding, RiseKit will build behavioral and skills-based machine learning models that will both improve a job seeker's journey and reduce the time and cost of sourcing talent for employers.
Strauss said that one of the biggest gaps between the job-hiring and job-seeking markets is access.
"There are a lot of systematic barriers put in place that slow down under-resourced populations and job seekers," he said. "We found out that it takes about 12 to 15 touch points to hire an 'overlooked' job seeker from a community organization. Compared to LinkedIn or Indeed, it's about two to three."
One way he thinks businesses can do a better job of finding the right talent is by collaborating more with community organizations for the 100 million people who don't use LinkedIn or Indeed. Out of the more than 200,000 community organizations in the U.S., companies typically partner with only five to 50 of them, he said.
"I was lucky. My friend's dad's friend's sister got me my first job, and that's just not how it is in under-resourced communities," Strauss said. "Some of our users come to our software with a zero to 10% confidence rate of getting a job."
Within the first month, job seekers on the platform increase their confidence by 50%, and RiseKit's goal is to get everybody to 80%, Strauss said.
