In 20 years, 45% of jobs that currently exist no longer will. Only 30% of people in the United States have degrees – however, those 30% suffer from staggering amounts of student loans, debts, and high-interest rates causing them to carry this financial baggage around for years. The co-founders of Caila experienced this personally. They have higher education degrees but experienced the devastating burden of student debt, one co-founder’s parents are unable to retire as they helped their children through the college. Caila is an ed-tech startup using data on college courses – from universities, online courses, and boot-camps – to match course information to the relevance of jobs, investing in improving education for future workforce development. The startup bypasses old university programs that drive job readiness and leverage data to figure out what courses, in fact, do fulfill job descriptions, ensuring to maximize educations for workforce placement.
In 20 years, 45% of jobs that currently exist no longer will.
But how do they do it? First, the look at data on jobs and data on courses including descriptions, sectors and beyond. Caila collects all this information and then connect to online education providers (such as Coursera) as well as connect with online employment hubs (like Glassdoor) through APIs. Their customers are companies who are looking for more data on jobs and improving their employees’ professional development. For instance, if a junior designer wants to become a creative director, Caila’s data can share what experience and courses are needed for the designer to get to the next level and stay on their career trajectory. By using artificial intelligence, Caila becomes the smartest career concierge to up skill working learners.
[tweetthis]By using AI, @GetCaila becomes the smartest career concierge to up skill working learners.[/tweetthis]
Caila’s goal is to be a b2c platform anyone can use and can learn to get to new career opportunities and achieve their career goals. They’d like to also provide the ability for their users to apply for jobs, no matter what level of formal education degree they have achieved, by being provided with the training needed to find their dream job and get hired. They are in conversations with companies who have aligned interests in job creation and job placement, such as LinkedIn and Burning Glass, where they hope to leverage their data to understand job market trends, predict future trends in the workforce, and graphic economic data. Over the next decade, they hope to loop back to providing this data to universities to better build courses and degrees that will educate their students with the knowledge needed to get employed. The founders met at in October 2015 at a Harvard Hackathon, Sergio with experience in startups building skills for employment and Alana inspired by interviews with kids at Boston’s Children’s Hospital who felt they had no options for education and employment. During this mentorship of these children, one interviewee asked, “Why can’t college be more like iTunes? A place where you can pick what you learn across institutions, courses, platforms.” Such innovations in education are why the founders launched their beta version of Caila in August 2016.
” If someone asks you if you can do something, say yes. Even if you don’t know, say yes and figure it out later.” – Alana Matos, Co-Founder of Caila
Currently, Caila is establishing partnerships with small-mid sized companies of 100-500 employees where they want to pilot their next product, a software matching system for companies to find ideal employees with unique experience and education. These partnerships are between companies interested from a multitude of sectors, especially communications and consulting. One of Caila’s unique features being its industry exhaustive and can process data from any industry to quantify insights. They are continuing to evolve on how to most efficiently work with the data they capture and experimenting with technologies to best process and analyze this information. They are learning machine learning, working with advisors from Microsoft and building adaptive processes to work with their data sets.
” Show up to everything – you never know what event or opportunity might pay back tenfold. ” – Alana Matos, Co-Founder of Caila
Having participated in Parallel 18, Alano Matos shares some of the most impactful aspects of the program being access to great mentorships and building authentic relationships with a supportive community of whom she still talks to fellow entrepreneurs from her cohort daily and communications continue through an ongoing WhatsApp group. They saw accelerated results during the program when their university partnerships went from 1 to 10 within the five months of their stay in Puerto Rico (a place that Alana likewise fell in love with). The $40k no strings attached funding Parallel 18 extends all of their startups kept them alive and able to continue to push on building partnerships and the platform for Caila. Alana also shares 2 key lessons she’s learned over the years. First, show up to everything – you never know what event or opportunity might pay back tenfold. Second, if someone asks you if you can do something, say yes. Even if you don’t know, say yes and figure it out later.
If you are an employer or someone interested in testing their system, contact the team and test their private beta new system.
As Caila continues to grow and improve workforce development and job opportunities, if you are an employer or someone interested in testing their system, contact the team and test their private beta new system. Likewise, if you are someone thinking of switching jobs or eager to move up in your company, but don’t know where to start to get to that destination – sign up for this private beta as well as it’s testing the new platform with both consumers and employers. Stay tuned with Caila as they continue to evolve and launch an even new innovative debut this August…more coming soon.
If you are someone thinking of switching jobs or eager to move up in your company, but don’t know where to start to get to that destination – sign up for this private beta
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