Over the course of 2020, Americans have witnessed a large decline in employment across the country due to the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To add onto that, income inequality and rapid reskilling for under-sourced people have both become some of the most critical issues in our society that need to be addressed.
In an effort to provide viable solutions for the blue-collar workforce during this crucial time, online talent platform Career Karma has set out to build a repeatable and scalable system designed to match workers across the country with higher-paying jobs and more fulfilling careers.
“We want to help a billion people in ten years,” said CEO and co-founder Ruben Harris. “In the last year, over 50 million Americans filed for unemployment due to COVID-19, most of them being Black and brown [people]. We want to effectively reskill and upskill those people quickly into jobs in a short amount of time and there’s no other platform that exists in order to do that.”
Harris, alongside co-founders Artur and Timur Meyster, quit his corporate job back in 2014 to break into Silicon Valley and gain valuable experience working with different tech companies in hopes of launching his own one day.
Together, Harris, Artur, and Timur Meyster all teamed up to develop a company perfectly positioned to flourish during a time where there’s such an urgent need for rapid reskilling.
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According to Harris, two major trends have risen in the workforce amid the COVID-19 pandemic — the unbundling of higher education and increased demand for skills training.
As stated in the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Future of Jobs Report, 54 percent of current employees — including the global/U.S. blue-collar workforce — will require reskilling by the year of 2022.
Additionally, a report from McKinsey Global Institute shares there’s a big opportunity for online talent platforms to become major players in adding over $2.5 trillion to global GDP by 2025.
With over 1 million people actively visiting Career Karma every month for career advice, the talent platform has proved that it has the capacity to ease numerous labor market-related dysfunctions by effectively connecting individuals with rewarding job opportunities.
Since launching in 2019, the platform has seen much success that includes placing over 3,000 blue-collar workers in jobs with companies such as Twitter, Tesla, Stitch Fix, Gemini and more.
Moreover, Career Karma has introduced its users to the best possible job training bootcamps that specialize in the skills they need to succeed in their desired field.
Through Career Karma’s platform, people have been able to gain useful technical skills required to navigate modern-day jobs and careers in a remote-working world.
“We want to essentially be the category kings of the rapid reskilling movement,” Harris concluded.
Now after raising a $10 million Series A, Career Karma has major plans to position itself as the top career-advice destination online by prioritizing product operations and data.
“We raised this money to hire a team to take [Career Karma] to the next level and create one of the best-pieces of career-navigation software of all time,” Harris said.
This funding round was largely led by VC firm Initialized Capital, who has invested in Career Karma’s mission since day one. Additionally, supporting investors in this financing round include the SoftBank Opportunity Fund, Imaginable Futures, Emerson Collective, as well as other individuals.
According to Harris, discussions surrounding this funding round led all parties involved to agree that rapid reskilling, coupled with the diverse talents that
each rising tech professional brings with them, is needed now more than ever.
With the collective experience of these investors, Career Karma can continue working toward its goal to become a billion-dollar company making a global impact to help humanity thrive.
Career Karma is the only recognized platform that, unlike others, addresses the entire career lifecycle to provide full support to its users through every stage.
The platform has built a strong community — mostly of Black and brown workers –– that both facilitates productive career navigation for any user and caters to its vision to be a trusted career advisor to any user that seeks its services.
In addition to placing workers at other companies, Career Karma itself is currently hiring for several senior-level positions to help Black and brown people fill these leadership teams outside of human resources.
Interested applicants can learn more about working at Career Karma here.
Furthermore, the platform wants to evolve into something that pushes career professionals to reskill and upskill themselves forever.
With a dedicated team of experienced career professionals, Career Karma is working to fill the void in the tech industry by matching individuals with rapid reskilling programs to help them transition to fruitful career paths.
For more information about Career Karma, visit its website..
