Abodoo: Matching And Mapping Skills

Meet Some of the Newest Startups in the HR Space!

   
Ben Wainwright, Founder            Vanessa Tierney, Founder

The HR Startup Q&A Series brings you the story behind each startup, the value they bring to the HR industry, insights into the new solutions that could work for HR professionals, and much more!   

Q: Tell us the story behind the company. What led you to start it?

Vanessa Tierney and Ben Wainwright: We started Abodoo to build a smart matching platform for the new world of work, where companies could connect with the best talent, globally, while reducing bias through anonymous profiling. The Covid-19 pandemic enabled companies to match with the right skilled people, no matter where there were located.

Q: Can you give us a brief about Abodoo and its products?

Vanessa & Ben: Abodoo is a skill matching and mapping platform that provides a free matching ecosystem for companies while supplying governments access to Geonostics, powered by Abodoo. Abodoo is the first dynamic skills platform that gives key data intelligence on available skills in a region and demand for the different models of work.

A license with Geonostics for government is a strong economic recovery tool as it provides insights to potential skills clusters for planning future digital hub locations, to attract global jobs, whether office-based or remote, the evidence for lobbying for more connectivity and planning to house, a means to attract home skilled international workers and digital nomads to live and work in the region. All of this is a stimulus to economic recovery and in time growth.

Q: What are the new trends that you see in the HR market where you could be catering to?

Vanessa & Ben: The biggest trend where we would be catering to is “smart working”. Every company and HR are working toward creating a ‘smart working’ model that works for their company, culture, product, and most importantly people.

We have shared Smart Working Audit templates with companies that want to establish a sustainable model for the future that has remote built-in, not just as a contingency to Covid-19 or as a benefit, but as an integral part of the working model moving forward.

HR has an incredible opportunity, with right support and investment, to evolve into digital work transformation specialists and be the champion of developing these smart working models that will have positive impact on culture, people and ultimately our world.

Corporate social responsibility teams and HR can align closely on the big three movements, namely remote working, environment and diversity/inclusion that fall under the UN sustainability goals.

Broadening talent pools to encompass people with mobility challenges, older people who are not ready for retirement, returning parents and refugees, and ensuring inclusion and equality from that first engagement right through to remote career progression will positively impact culture, employer brand and the bottomline of a company.

The core values of transparency, authenticity and being human will be the superpowers of organizations that thrive.

Q: What improvement are you planning to your solutions?

Vanessa & Ben: We will continue to develop Geonostics so that educational partners and digital hubs can leverage skills data intelligence to fill skills gaps of today and tomorrow, and connect people with hybrid work locations as the world becomes more and more distributed.

As for our matching platform, we offer it to companies at no cost to connect with global talent and know that they are engaging in a diversity-first process. We have some exciting plans for soft skill matching and mapping. The Covid-19 pandemic had negatively impacted employment levels in several key industries, and robotics and automation have also made certain roles redundant. We will be able to support skills transfers to new industries in growth mode.

Q: Could you please share a case study?

Vanessa & Ben: We were asked to produce a talent heat map of a region in the South of Ireland to demonstrate the available skills with the goal of attracting inward investment and landing a company into a new digital co-working hub.

Abodoo is designed to capture rich data sets around someone’s skills, but also desires for this new world of work, by tracking their preference of location, connectivity level, earning range if offered more flexibility, etc.

We produced a talent heat map capturing a snapshot of the available talent in the region and of those who were ready to move to the region for opportunities. This was used by the government to successfully land the first International software company in the region that intends to hire up to 150 employees in a hybrid model of coworking and home.

This was a great success and led us to build Geonostics as we realized the power of skills data and the importance of being dynamically updated in real-time. Since then we are now working with the second-largest county in the country and are in talks now with many regions internationally too, which have a similar mandate.

Q: What are the market pain points that you address?
 

Vanessa & Ben: We are supporting local governments in addressing the issue of job loss. Over 400 million people were unemployed since Covid-19. We can also help those, who have been affected due to recession, or loss of tax income, etc. by providing key live intelligence on people and skills.

For businesses, we provide access to hire from a broad pool of talent using a smart matching platform that shows them the right matches, helps reduce bias through anonymity at first stage screening and also provides key data points that are important when hiring for remote-ready roles, or whatever your smart working model is.

For people, we enable them to connect with companies, based on their skills, that are remote-friendly and welcoming to a broader talent pool and experience. Irrespective of whether you are a new graduate, or a tired commuter, or a returning parent, or have felt excluded from the 9-5 perfect-fit or are not ready for retirement, we welcome you to Abodoo - your “Abode” to “do”.