Youth unemployment and graduate underemployment are hitting record levels, and one Canadian startup has set out to tackle these issues.
Riipen, the latest pitch on The Disruptors, is an experiential learning platform that aims to reduce graduate underemployment by enabling employers to present challenges or projects that students can take on. The company aims to connect students with different industries and eliminate the skills and experience gap between graduates’ abilities and the needs of a given business.
“Students gain real world experience and build out their industry connections, and companies get to leverage millennial insights while building a talent pipeline for future roles and opportunities in their organizations,” said Dave Savory, a co-founder of Riipen, which has talked about its scale in the last year. “Riipen is disrupting where talent meets industry.”
While co-host Bruce Croxon is trying to figure out the “tech component” of Riipen, he says the company is tackling a massive problem when it comes to recruiting talent.
“The resume and job fair process is incredibly cumbersome and often not all that revealing,” said Croxon. “So what better way to get some real life experiences on seeing how each other work, [in] real time, to short cut the process of getting somebody hired.”
Watch the full pitch below:
BetaKit is a production partner on The Disruptors. Tune in to BNN every Thursday night at 7pm for full episodes!