Marc Serber, Author at Global Trade Magazine

Young people make up a disproportionate share of what is a low-wage workforce and recent studies argue that they will be the hardest hit by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic.

What are your projections for their job-market recovery, post-COVID-19?

Co-Founder and CEO Stephen Shefsky

Unfortunately, a lot of entry-level positions affecting younger, lower skilled workers were the first and hardest-hit at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many employers during the pandemic, fired or furloughed many of their workers, that were deemed necessary for their survival. Given the above, it is no surprise that U.S. low-wage unemployment has skyrocketed at its peak to roughly 40%.

As businesses start to come back, there may be some subtle advantages for those low-skilled / low-wage workers. Some companies will inevitably gravitate towards hiring or re-hiring their lower-wage earners, instead of turning to an older, more expensive and more-skilled workforce.

Not all young people will immediately find employment; some must be prepared to accept the fact that their jobs won’t come back. When that happens, ‘up-skilling’ will become very important. Giving direction to those looking to re-enter the workforce is something very top of mind at tilr.

We at tilr believe there is a better way to bring job-seekers back into the workforce; a better way for employers to save both time and money in their on-boarding process.

tilr’s technology will help solve some of those challenges for both job-seekers and employers.

The country is going to be in a place of rebuilding and recovery over the next several years. We realize that this is the moment that companies and job-seekers alike will need us most.

How will tilr’s technology be applicable to what is today, an American workforce in crisis?

til’s algorithmic-hiring platform offers an alternative to traditional resume databases and key word search technology. We have developed ‘an on-demand marketplace’, one that matches pre-registered workers’ skills with employers, not based on keywords that may or may not be included in their resumes.

This will give job-seekers a better opportunity to find employment and jobs best suited to their skills, because it will no longer come down to who wrote a better resume, be subject to bias or cause candidates to play the waiting game, while employers sift through countless resumes before they happen to come upon the one they like, costing the company time and money.

For employers (and tilr has worked with hundreds of client companies), the way we’ve developed our technology is, in many ways, revolutionary. We have built the technology that is able to define the deliverable (skills) that a company needs in real-time and then quickly unlock a pool of workers that have the specific, necessary tools to accomplish the job at hand. We provide a platform for locating immediately available, local talent who can be employed in a matter of hours or days.

COVID-19 has hurt many; we’re witnessing presently an historically high unemployment rate. We want to offer people relief by way of giving them a better chance to find work, to take care of their families, and to do so based on their previous job experience and relevant skills obtained; not by having to take many months or years to reinvent themselves (which some people will inevitably have to do).

Today, many unemployed men and women will need time to be reabsorbed into the marketplace. Our technology further directs those people to training platforms capable of helping them ‘up-skill’ and to prepare them for work; to be as good or better than they were before.

As companies pivot to teleconferencing, their employees working from home in the spirit of ‘social distancing’, how can modern technology benefit those looking to employ and/or up-skill future workers?

Many companies are going to continue to employ their workers, and having some of them working from home as opposed to an office environment.

Today’s technology gives companies the option to have many members of their workforce contribute remotely. There are many software solutions that will allow more and more work to be done virtually, affording workers the opportunity to keep in constant contact with their organizations.

However, I’ve always believed that for employers, knowing what human resources (HR) / skills they don’t have in the organization is as important as knowing what you currently have at any given moment.

tilr has built the technology that will assist the job-matching and skills matching for those companies, which can expedite the process of hiring workers, both for in-office positions and from home.

Our ‘marketplace’ technology can support employers in real-time, razor focused on understanding and interpreting aggregated skill-sets, offering access to a more focused labor market, while also preparing future employees for a virtual workforce-environment.

Companies can access the platform from the web on any computer or handheld device.

Workers can access tilr opportunities via an app on IOS and Android mobile devices.

tilr’s technology can assist job-seekers to identify their own present skill-gaps and offer opportunities or suggestions on how to ‘up-skill’ to match the jobs they want. We will introduce new employment opportunities matching their skill-sets which they may not have thought of.

Learning will become much more technology-driven in the near term. Even after we return to a semblance of normalcy, more learning and work will take place online. As an example, technology that drives telemedicine today may very well become the first line of interaction between a patient and a doctor long after COVID-19.

We are currently in discussions with several companies (States and Provincial Governments in the U.S. and Canada) to offer our skill mapping technology and create a database of human resources (skills).

Lastly, is embracing technology the future of the Employment Agency?

Employment agencies are going to need to do things a little differently in the future.

tilr technology can assist the 80-85% of workers who are currently registered with an agency, but not always working.

tilr offers employment agency businesses an additional way of helping those registered with the agency to find work, who are not currently working, providing a more efficient use of human resources.

It’s safe to say that the current workforce is in an awful state of disarray. Technology can help usher in a workforce revolution, and help propel an economic recovery.

tilr automates the recruitment process by using skills to connect companies with job seekers, enhancing workers’ lives and companies’ bottom lines.

Well before our world was turned upside down by the Coronavirus, e-Learning was on the rise.

Technology is helping to break the barriers of student-professor and peer to peer interaction. Thus, while online learning was once looked upon as but a potential alternative compared to its brick and mortar counterpart, MBAs and other degrees obtained online from accredited universities now hold just as much weight in the court of public opinion as degrees acquired in the traditional manner. In times of pandemic, the virtualization of education has become vital.

With school closures due to COVID-19 (coronavirus) having impacted 97% of America’s 56.6 million students and 94% of the 132,000 private and public schools in the U.S, institutions shuttered across the nation, educators, tutors, and nonprofits working in the sector needed to find alternatives to salvage the remainder of the academic year.

Yes, the pivot to virtual learning had to and indeed must remain to be expedited. Yet the infuriating truth is that the majority of schools and communities across the country lack the necessary assets, be it access to modern hardware and software or the connectivity to ensure everyone gets online. In my view, it’s commendable that organizations such as Study.com acted pragmatically in this environment, donating 100,000 licenses to their online education-driven programs to schools across the country right at the beginning of state shutdowns. Their extensive online curriculums are capable of many different sites and platforms and no doubt it was imperative that little time was wasted in getting these programs into the hands of those that need it most.

In addition to bringing online or e-Learning to prominence, the Coronavirus crisis will most likely alter the way students are taught in the future. Teachers may use digital resources to maximize the minimal amount of contact time they have with their students. Education can be personalized to befit the student, rather than a rather antiquated ‘one size fits all’ approach seen in years past. Perhaps lectures can be recorded and assigned for homework so that more class time can be dedicated to analysis or insightful discussion. A ‘hybrid’ style of teaching may emerge, in which digital learning is interwoven into the everyday fabric of formal education.

Ultimately, digital learning should be viewed as a tool that can democratize education in the US (rural, urban) and globally, perhaps quelling the brain drain drawing away emerging market nations’ brightest and best. e-Learning platforms can also fill the void often left by school systems that have had to abandon essential subject departments because they lack adequate funding.

Additionally, a strong e-Learning platform with quality teachers at the helm means that anyone with access can absorb high-caliber instruction, no matter the standard of teaching, curriculum, or the reputation of the school district. Indeed the same knowledge can be attained by students from low per capita areas as those attending the nation’s most prestigious (and most expensive) schools.

There are no doubt challenges associated with e-Learning. First and foremost, it’s about making sure that every student in need has a device from which they can gain entry to their lessons. Then it’s about connectivity, especially tough during a time when paying for the internet may understandably not be a high priority. Finally, what mechanisms do we put in place to make sure our kids ‘show up’ to their computers and hold themselves accountable?

Despite these challenges, there is a real opportunity for schools and families to take advantage of the many online learning tools today readily at their disposal.

This revolution was slowly happening; Covid-19 kicked it into warp speed. Those who adjust will see benefits lasting well into the future; those who don’t adapt will be left well behind.

Either way, the train has left the station and is picking up considerable speed. It’s time to log on.

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Marc Serber is a former broadcaster and an alumnus from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Serber is currently a freelance writer on international policy.

The Employment System Was Broken Long Before COVID-19 – Can tilr Lead a Workforce Revolution?

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