Opportunity@Work

What They're Building

The Problem. For millions of workers, the dream of a better life is becoming harder to achieve. Since the 1980s, median wages have dropped 13% for Americans without a four-year degree, and millennials are likely to be the first generation that earns less than their parents. Middle-wage jobs that offer entry to a career path are becoming more and more difficult to obtain. Some say this is because of a “skills gap.” They believe the rapid pace of technological change makes it hard for workers to acquire the cutting-edge skills and education required for 21st-century jobs. But the real reason for the bleak future isn’t a skills gap; it’s an opportunity gap. This term historically described disparities in access to education, but today it applies equally to career pathways.

Getting good jobs that offer a pathway to the middle class often depends less on individuals’ skills than on whether and where they went to college, whom they know professionally or socially, or even how they look. The systematic screening out of STARs leaves millions of people from all ethnic, racial, and demographic backgrounds and career stages trapped in the opportunity gap in deeply frustrating ways. Stuck in low-wage jobs, STARs earn little and learn less; they are denied the opportunity to apply their skills, creativity, and motivation to the fullest; and they are screened out, left behind, and held back from the American Dream. And our employers and economy lose a valuable source of talent and contribution.

How is Technology Enabling their Mission and Vision? Stellarworx is their technology platform. It’s designed to connect Training Providers/Educators who are supporting STARs in their learning journey, the STARs themselves who are Job Seekers, and Employers committed to hiring STARs. Stellarworx is more than a job board. It’s a hiring ecosystem designed to filter in (vs. filter out) STARs for middle wage jobs in tech, advanced manufacturing, sales, healthcare, etc. that do not require a bachelor’s degree. On Stellarworx, employers can signal the skills in demand by posting open positions to STAR job seekers and training providers. Training Providers can signal the skills they are developing in their training programs. And everything is matched on skills, powered by the Workday Skills Cloud.

The Stellarworx B2B technology platform launched in Beta in the summer of 2020 and is currently utilized in the Washington DC metro area and in Los Angeles, with the Bay Area ramping up now. Major employers are supporting the development of the network effect in key markets. Although the platform is fully operational, many feature enhancements are needed to fully productionalize the platform, improve the UI, and to support the growing number of enterprise employers with needs for integration, efficiency and analytics & insights.

In addition to adding features for more effectiveness, as the network grows, their team envisions the ability to utilize the learnings to improve the skills-based matching algorithms with ML, to grow trust in the provider network through feedback and data insights, to integrate other modules that support the learning-to-earning pipeline (such as coaching and mentoring features, job aides, assessments, interview preparation), and to scale the platform to support millions of STARs and 1000s of employers. They also want to provide a data insights platform (unauthenticated and authenticated) arising from their Insights work, as well as the signaling and commitments made through the Stellarworx platform.