UpScored launches job-matching platform for applicants and employers

Searching for a new job sucks. It sucks even more when you apply for a job you’re super pumped about just to find out that the company doesn’t think you’re cut out for it. #Rude. UpScored, which launched its data-driven end-to-end platform for employers and job seekers onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2016, matches job seekers with roles for which they’re most qualified and most likely to get.

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The aim of UpScored is to show you within two minutes the jobs you’re most likely to get. First, you sign up through Facebook, LinkedIn or email, upload your resume and indicate what level of seniority you’re looking for. The next step is to describe yourself on three sliding scales: from organized to adaptable, creative to analytical and tie to hoodie. Then you specify what you’re looking for in your career move by selecting two of the four most important factors, which UpScored defines as compensation and benefits, career progression, work/life balance and strong mentorship. The last step is to select at least two industries in which you’re interested.

UpScored then shows you 25 jobs, narrowed down from a database of over 30,000, along with your UpScore, which is based on the company’s algorithm that reflects how good of a fit you are for a job. The higher the UpScore, the more likely you are to get that job. UpScored is also designed to learn your preferences with a Pandora-like upvote feature.

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“Where we see the best opportunity, or biggest gap, is this young professional with three years up to 10 or over 15 — this mid-level to senior-level type of role,” UpScored co-founder and CEO Elise Runde Voss told me. More specifically, UpScored is targeting people who are not necessarily unhappy in their careers but may be down for a switch.

I took UpScored out for a spin but found that many of the jobs I personally felt I was a good fit for didn’t recognize the breadth of my skills. I definitely have content creation, video production and social media skills, but according to UpScored, I don’t. But, maybe that’s my fault and my resume simply doesn’t have enough relevant information on it? Not sure.

UpScored launched its private beta in November 2015 for job seekers, and started onboarding paid pilot clients in the last few weeks. So far, employers on the platform include Yext, Outbrain, Magnetic, Noble Markets and a Fortune 100 healthcare company. More than 40 percent of candidates sent to employers via UpScored receive interview requests, and 87 percent of candidates like the jobs they see.

There are currently over 2,000 candidates on UpScored and it is 100 percent free for the job applicant. UpScored makes money by charging companies to post jobs and see qualified candidates. It’s currently available in New York and has plans to launch in Boston and San Francisco.

Judges Q&A

Q: How do you determine what the company wants and translate that to a score?
A: We use a company’s job description and a few additional parameters they add to the job description.

Q: Are you doing that?
A: They do that. They just paste in the job description.

Q: Simply, Hired and indeed were doing this. The biggest problem turned out to be customer acquisition.
A: When people are searching for jobs, they’re usually not telling their friends. UpScored is more of a career discovery process and less of a job search. Going forward, we realize we need to scale in other ways. On the company side, it’s hard to fill software engineering roles. On the candidate side, we have a great pool of candidates with background in data science and data analytics.

Q: Talk more about NLP (natural language processing) technology? Anything proprietary?
A: The UpScore comprises a bunch of different inputs based on information extracted from over 600,000 resumes. We’re taking that learning and predictive analytics and applying them to users.

Q: Are companies telling you if they hire someone?
A: Yeah, so we’ve had pilot partners on for three weeks. As I mentioned, 40 percent or more of candidates are getting interview requests. That’s compared to the 1 percent of applicants that come through on a standard career site. We’re already starting to see early success which is really exciting.

Q: Can you make recommendations to employers to tune their job descriptions?
A: Yes, but that’s more of a consulting service that we’re not doing with everyone but it could be automated in the future.