Just saw this across the PR wires. We’re a bit dubious on the premise. It requires job seekers to pay which traditionally doesn’t work as a business model.

TalentWorks today announced the launch of a unique jobs platform that promises to connect recent graduates with job interviews for just $10 per week. Founded by entrepreneurs and former Amazon engineering leaders Kushal Chakrabarti and Ajit Banerjee, TalentWorks is backed by some of the first investors in Uber, Twitter, and Airbnb, including Felicis Ventures, Founder’s Co-Op, and Lowercase Capital.

The company’s mission is to help job seekers get the jobs they deserve and close persistent opportunity gaps for traditionally underrepresented groups, drawing on big data and machine learning to level the playing field for job seekers who feel they don’t have the personal or social networks that are critical early in the job process. The company reports that 71 percent of 2017 graduates using TalentWorks in May secured their first interview within just two weeks.

“As a recent graduate, I underestimated how overwhelming and demoralizing the job search is, especially when you apply to hundreds of jobs and get ghosted — not even a rejection email!” said Vivian Lee, a 2016 graduate who applied to 500+ jobs before TalentWorks helped her land a role at a startup in Silicon Valley. “My TalentWorks mentor was my backbone for the job search — helping me optimize my resume and providing moral support. Without TalentWorks, I honestly don’t know if I’d be working at my current job, or at all.”

Research suggests that just 12 percent of college graduates have a job lined up before graduating, and less than one-quarter of employers believe that college graduates are prepared to succeed in their first job. Moreover, a growing body of evidence suggests that an increasingly data-driven job search and recruitment process may exacerbate existing biases that disadvantage women and minority job seekers.

“The job search is a numbers game. But little changes in how job seekers present themselves can dramatically increase their odds of winning an interview,” said Kushal Chakrabarti, Co-Founder and CEO of TalentWorks. “Networking takes time, money, and connections. For many, those are out-of-reach luxuries. Instead of who someone knows (or doesn’t know), we can help them shine based on what they know. On average, our algorithms can help most people get an interview after 10-15 applications.”

People signing up for TalentWorks first upload their resume, which is analyzed and tuned by TalentWorks’ algorithms over 34 different dimensions, ranging from education to extracurricular achievements and competition. TalentWorks then finds all the recently posted jobs they qualify for and prepares job applications for them, which subscribers can then submit with one click.

The TalentWorks platform features three services: mentorship (TalentAdvocates), resume scoring and optimization (ResumeScore), and automated job searching and applications (ApplicationAssistant).

• TalentAdvocates, experienced hiring managers from diverse industries, help job seekers navigate the often-confusing hiring process, answer specific questions, and work with a supportive partner.
• ResumeScore automatically parses, scores, and optimizes every applicant’s resume against 100,000+ resumes to increase their interview response rate.
• ApplicationAssistant automatically crawls 50,000+ jobs in 400+ cities every day to find jobs that subscribers qualify for and prepares 1-click-ready job applications.

Combined, these services enable TalentWorks to provide an “Interview Guarantee” for $10 per week. By sending a well-optimized resume to numerous jobs that an applicant is qualified for, TalentWorks subscribers experience higher response rates and can feel confident they’re not missing relevant opportunities.

TalentWorks is addressing corporate efforts to streamline recruiting processes through practices like automated scoring algorithms and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), which have largely removed the human touch from hiring processes and typically sort candidates using predetermined criteria.