1. What is the inspiration behind Able Jobs? What experience of your founders motivated them to start the company?
Before Able Jobs, we were helping non-technical students prepare for college examinations. We realized that for most non-technical students jobs are of prime concern. When we dig deeper we realize that it takes 6-12 months for a non-technical graduate to get their first job. To understand the gap we went to HR and business leaders to understand what stops them from hiring. We eventually realized that the skill gap among the fresh graduates stops freshers get jobs. Therefore we thought to help these people get jobs and started training them for jobs directly. Initially, we taught people on phone, then we taught people on WhatsApp, and finally, after some placements, we launched the Able Jobs app to help students prepare for the job.
We are 3 founders and we all know each other for the last 6 years. We started as a weekend project and slowly evolved it into what you see as Able Jobs. All three founders have worked for an ed startup before and we are super passionate about how the internet can be used for socio-economic upliftment in the next decade. We are a team of a total of 25+ people from diverse backgrounds including IIT, IIM, Teach for India, and more.
2. What is exclusive about your organization? What makes it different from other HR-tech startups?
Able Jobs trains entry-level job seekers for roles in sales and support. Job seekers download our app then go through our training courses and post completion of the course we connect them to companies and get them jobs. We are solving the problem of employability for non-tech audiences. Every year more than 18Mn+ people graduate with -technical degrees like BA, BBA but struggle to get a job. Our rigorous in-house designed training program ensures that fresh graduates learn the required skill to get the job. The courses are highly vocationally delivered online with help of experienced trainers.
Designing the right pedagogy so that we can remove the subjectivity from non-tech jobs has been one of the biggest challenges initially. Over time we have closely worked with students and companies to understand the key gaps and designed content, proprietary frameworks, and assessment that helps us evaluate a candidate in-depth and provide them the skill required for the job. Our app ensures that the content is delivered perfectly and job seekers can get the skills required for a job.
3. What is your tech training strategy that provides them guaranteed jobs?
Our pedagogy and training methodology differentiate us from the competitors. Our training is fast-paced, a learner can comfortably complete a module in a short span; Our training is relevant, we only focus on the core skills and knowledge a learner needs; Our training is rooted in what happens in real life i.e. they are taught skills that they will use and apply not only in their interview but also in their jobs.
4. What gives people trained by able jobs an edge over their competitors in the market?
5. You managed to place 1000+ people in midst of a pandemic, what is the innovative strategy?
6. Tell us about your product “India’s first audio job recommendation on the app using AI & ML”
At Able Jobs, people can practice sales pitches and record their audio recordings for feedback. User records their audio, we give them a score using our proprietary AI model, and then suggest jobs best suited to their communication skills. This helps users understand top companies where they can get hired eventually helping them land a job faster.
Most of the models including Google, Amazon voice recognition models do not work for Indian accents since they are created primarily for the western use case. This is the first of its kind model for recognizing the Indian accent.
7. In which direction do you see the company expanding or exploring new areas?
We are expanding our portfolio to provide training in job areas of industries like BFSI and BPO. We have a catalog of 60+ courses and we are looking to expand it rapidly in these industries. We use proprietary AI/ML models to assess the candidature of job seekers based on their communication skills, and we can now process over a thousand applicants in a minute. This gives us an edge over any other partner to help to hire scalably. We’re working on further improving the accuracy of our models with the help of data from our increasing user base, among other things.
With a lot of companies extending their work from home timelines and others planning to move a significant workforce to remote working, companies will need ready trained talent, since onboarding and training will be less intensive as compared to in-office setup. We believe that our program inculcates the right job skills to get a person started for work without any additional training.
