Launch HN: InsideSherpa (YC W19) – online courses to train then hire students

There are many talented and determined college students who get overlooked during the hiring process because of arbitrary measures like what university they went to, how their resume was written, or by not having any connections into a company.

Tom and I saw this in our corporate careers—we used to work in law and big 4 accounting—and spent a lot of free time helping disadvantaged students improve their resumes. We found that with a bit of editing, skill-building and some exposure to people from big companies, we could increase the likelihood that someone would get an interview and land a job at a big organization. After doing this process manually day-in and day-out we thought there had to be a way to improve employment outcomes for students, at scale!

So we started InsideSherpa and decided to take a student-centric approach to understanding the recruitment process. To do this, we talked to tons of students and found consistent anxieties arose: 1. Students were anxious about choosing a career for the next 5 years of their life (and do it in a risk-free manner) 2. Students weren’t sure if they had the skills to be useful to employers (usually when they actually did have the skills) and 3. Many students felt like the big companies were so inaccessible to them they didn’t even consider applying at all.

On top of this, we’ve found many large companies tend to only visit a tiny percentage of the campuses in the US. This meant many talented students we met, in more isolated or non-target universities, weren’t even getting a shot to apply for a job.

To solve these problems, we created our “Virtual Experience Programs”. These are like an online course, but instead of teaching you theory, like they do at college or in MOOCs, you receive tasks that simulate what professionals do in industry. For example, one task in our JPMorgan Chase Software Engineering program is to quickly update a Python script to find the average of two financial data feeds—something junior software engineers actually do with traders. Other tasks on our platform allow students to build practical skills in law, mechanical engineering, management consulting and investment banking.

By doing the Virtual Experience Programs, students can get their name and profile onto a CRM that our partner clients are using for early-talent reachout and hiring. JPMorgan Chase prioritizes its Virtual Experience participants for review in the application process for software engineering summer internships and full-time roles. Students can always opt-out of sharing their data with any firm at any time as well.

Our programs are free for any college student to do. We make money by charging employers rather than students. Employers love what we do as it allows them to reach out and find college students who genuinely want to pursue a career in their field, no matter who they are or where they are.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can make the hiring process better for college students!

[1] The JPMorgan Chase Software Engineering Virtual Experience: https://www.insidesherpa.com/virtual-internships/prototype/R...

[2] General Electric Program: https://www.insidesherpa.com/virtual-int...