Scoutible
written BY Kelly Costello / PHOTOGRAPHY provided by SCOUTIBLE
Welcome to the first of the SHACK15 Startup Spotlight series, where we introduce you to members of the SHACK15 community, and shine a light on how they are changing the game in their industry.
Scoutible is a SHACK15 resident startup that’s revolutionizing the hiring process by using game-based technology and artificial intelligence. Developed by scientists at Harvard and Stanford, Scoutible’s role-playing video game assesses a candidate’s essential attributes and provides employers with the most accurate predictors of job success. Job seekers can use this game as well to gain the necessary insight to land positions in which they have the best chance to thrive. Scoutible’s mission is to the systemic eliminate bias in the hiring process to create a more diverse, equitable and fulfilled workforce.
|
We spoke to CEO Angela Antony about Scoutible’s approach to the future of work and her thoughts on what COVID-19 means for hiring.
Why is hiring a problem you wanted to solve?
We live in a society where human talent is consistently underutilized and undervalued. As the future of work changes, companies are often at a loss on how to discover the reservoirs of talent hiding in the flood of applications they receive. The core problem is that most companies don’t know what traits lead to job success and what to look for in a candidate. Instead, employers are forced to rely on resumes as a proxy for talent. But, the flaw is that people’s talents go far beyond their educational pedigree and work history.
|
What makes Scoutible more accurate than resumes?
People often are turned down for career opportunities because they don’t have years of experience on their resume, even though research has proven that experience isn’t actually highly predictive of job success.
If experience in a job doesn’t predict future job success, what does? Having personality traits and soft skills that fit the job. In fact, 89% of turnover is actually due to soft skill mismatch, not hard skills. Scoutible helps to measure and express soft skills to employers, which creates a better match with employers than resumes do.
What makes Scoutible different from other hiring tools?
Scoutible combines gamification, psychological science, and AI to help companies discover talent hiding behind resume biases, socioeconomic barriers, and exhausted candidate pools. The tool empowers employers to see candidates for their true potential to thrive in a specific role, where they may have been overlooked otherwise.
|
How does Scoutible help companies to hire diverse candidates?
Resumes create a breeding ground for conscious and unconscious bias. For example, studies show that “whitening” an applicant’s name leads to twice as many callbacks for interviews. In a traditional hiring process, recruiters might tap into their unconscious biases from a candidate’s gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic signals like speech and attire.
Scoutible’s platform gates out potentially discriminatory information which is not predictive of future performance and instead highlights a candidate’s natural strengths and attributes that correlate with high performance on the job.
We're in a unique time, with the pandemic shifting the job market in unexpected ways. What role does Scoutible play in the future of hiring as it evolves?
As job seekers, we are only ever exposed to a small fraction of possible jobs in the world, largely as a function of circumstantial factors like the socioeconomic background we were born into. It’s statistically very unlikely that people will serendipitously find roles that match their unique abilities and interests. This is what I believe is this century’s most imminent threat to American competitiveness—that our labor market systematically misallocates our most valuable natural resource, our people.
Although the pandemic has been tragic, this is also an opportunity to course-correct. Of the jobs lost in the past several months, around 40% of these have been lost permanently. Scoutible has been built for dramatic shifts like these. Our technology really allows people to seamlessly switch into careers they have yet to experience but have the natural skills to thrive in. This may be the opportunity many people have been waiting for to finally find their dream career. Life is short and tomorrow is never guaranteed. We spend most of our adult lives at work; isn’t it time to go for our dreams?
|
Thanks so much to Angela and the Scoutible team for sharing their story with us. Scoutible has just released their brand new app that helps everyone discover their unique career and personal strengths. During the pandemic, they have made it completely free for users! You can learn more and accept your invitation here.
Stay tuned for more SHACK15 Startup Spotlights in the future, where we highlight the great work being done by members of the SHACK15 community!