Anna Voskuil | News Editor
Featured Image: Nugget targets unconscious biases during job recruitment. | Courtesy of LaunchYU
The future of job recruitment starts today.
Founded by Schulich undergraduates Ali El-Shayeb and Mariam Walaa, the LaunchYU startup project “Nugget” uses artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline job recruitment, targeted towards employers who would assess candidates during the interviewing process.
Nugget aims to address unconscious bias during the job recruitment process (often as a result of large applicant numbers) as well as to provide insight into candidate decision-making processes. “We wanted to provide a platform for universities and employers to assess students and candidates through bite-sized learning opportunities,” said Walaa.
Nugget assesses a candidate’s cognitive abilities based on their performance in the simulation, wherein they would describe how each person would take on a real-world challenge while on the job.
Nugget works in three steps: create, assess, and evaluate.
First, employers initiate and build role-specific challenges to their talent; then, employees will finish relevant task-based challenges, where the top performers will be identified; and finally, to retain, coach, hire, and develop these excelling performers, top-performing characteristics will be used to drive insights across a business.
“It could be as simple as a project coordinator role delegating tasks to the team based on their skill set,” Walaa added.
Simply put, Nugget acts similar to a job posting—however, it is now included with a specific problem to solve.
Further, Walaa compared Nugget’s technological process to an escape room scenario.
“We’re able to pick up different bite-sized content pieces that the employer would actually be inputting at this stage of onboarding.
“Those nuggets are opportunities for the candidate to learn about their role in the company and actually be able to perform tasks,” she said.
The project was one of five startups to win the LaunchYU Accelerator Program Award 1 in July, which includes $3,000 for development funds.
The four-month long LaunchYU Accelerator Program offers one-on-one mentorship, workshops, bootcamps, as well as other services, aimed towards aiding young entrepreneurs as they build upon their business project.
“AccelerateUP is a program offered by LaunchYU to help entrepreneurs build, launch, and scale their ventures,” says LaunchYU Entrepreneurship Manager Nilay Goyal.
“At AccelerateUP we not only provide them guidance and knowledge about how to build a startup, we also help prepare our entrepreneurs to take bold and difficult decisions which could be critical during the early stages of the startup,” she says.
“The program is divided into four sprints, with each sprint focusing on one key aspect of the business.”
“We not only support them on their business models, revenue, and job creation, but also on the individual.”
On the graduation and launch day, September 27, Award 2 winners will be announced. At the event, leading program ventures will be showcased to a curated audience of industry partners, professionals, and investors.
This process has shown to be significant in shaping Nugget’s success.
“Every year when we run this program, we are amazed to see the passion and dedication of our entrepreneurs,” says Goyal.
On El-Shayeb, she adds: “Ali has been an exceptional entrepreneur, and I have been amazed by his passion and commitment.
“I have had the pleasure to watch the growth of Nugget, and look forward to their future pursuits.”
