A Brazilian Startup that Grew 300% during the Pandemic Helping Companies to Reduce Unconscious Bias

Cammila Yochabell, CEO and founder of Jobecam tells us about agile talent selection.

First of all, how are you and your family doing in these COVID-19 times? 

Cammila Yochabell: The terrible COVID 19 situation here in Brazil is one of the worst in the world. However, my family and friends are okay. Nobody has had big problems with Covid-19.  

Tell us about you, your career, and how you founded Jobecam.

Cammila Yochabell: I hold a degree in Oil and gas, but I didn’t have the opportunity to work in this area. So I changed my career and I fell in love with the HR field. So, I invested more than eight years getting experience working with HR in great multinationals companies. But, in 2016, I spent time in Australia for an immersion to learn English. During that time, I started looking for a job, and I experienced first-hand how difficult it is to be seen as more than a piece of paper and be valuable for my competencies instead of my appearance. No matter if I’m Latina, a woman, or anything else, my competency is more important than everything else. So, I got the idea to change the manner that recruiters hire, help them with more efficiency and less unconscious bias. This is how Jobecam video blind technology was born.

How does Jobecam innovate? 

Cammila Yochabell: We make the hiring process more efficient and fair through video blind interviews. The hiring process is often ineffective, inefficient, and, more importantly, biased. These inefficiencies lead to inadequate recruiting, lack of diversity, retention, and higher costs. Unconscious biases, unfortunately, are part of the current process and the profiles the recruiters are analyzing. An applicant’s race, gender, age, sexual orientation, etc., are judged instead of abilities, competencies, and experiences. I wanted to do something to change this and help companies and recruiters promote a world that values diversity, so I created Jobecam. Instead of paper CVs, candidates apply for a job using short videos in which their identities are obscured, and Jobecam’s technology records and transcribes what is being said. Then, AI software ranks candidates against matching keywords and Q&A responses, all without (potentially biased) human intervention. Recruiters can watch an edited video, in which AI algorithms conceal a candidate’s identity by blurring their image and changing their voice. Only when a recruiter is satisfied with a candidate’s experience and skills, can they unblur the screen and reveal the candidate’s identity.  

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business and how are you coping?

Cammila Yochabell: The pandemic has affected us but not just in a negative way because we are helping companies to keep their hiring process secure. We are growing during this pandemic. Due to the social distance, video interviews are a necessity, and besides helping companies to bring more diversity, we also help companies to turn their hire process efficient and secure. We’ve grown more than 300% since the beginning of the pandemic until now.  

Did you have to make difficult choices and what are the lessons learned?

Cammila Yochabell:  Sure. In the beginning, unfortunately, we had to let go of some colleagues and we also had an investment canceled. It was terrible because have had to stop many plans and projections, and suddenly, everything changed and we had to reinvent to win through these bad times. But we are one resilient team. We’ve learned a lot with hard situations and the main lesson was to stay together and help each other, is no matter the problem. 

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?

Cammila Yochabell: We’ve applied the OKRs method and this is helping us a lot to have a vision of the future. As our team is in the home office, we are using our Jobecam live room to do meetings, and tools such as Hubspot and Trello to organize our objectives and goals. But the main skill that we are using to navigate through this crisis is the need to have patience, maintain focus on our purpose, and the most important maintain a positive mentality. 

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

Cammila Yochabell: Our direct competitors are video recruiting platforms such as Jobma and Hireview. But until now, we are unique with our video blind interview tool, which offers video blind interviews in a recorded or live way.

Your final thoughts?

Cammila Yochabell: Unconscious bias – learned stereotypes that are unintentional and deeply ingrained, and can influence our behavior- is a global problem, holding many people, including women and ethnic minorities back in the workplace. Globally, just 15% of leadership positions are held by women, according to a report by Deloitte, while, in Jobecam’s Brazil, just 6% of management positions are held by black people, despite more than half of the population being black according to another report. “We live in a world with people from different ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds, but equal opportunities in the labor market is not always a reality – and is for that that we wake up every morning and working for. Jobecam is transforming diversity in companies and doing a great social impact in the community.

Your website?

www.jobecam.com 

Jobecam on SiliconPrairieNews