Gary Izunwa was earning six figures when he quit his job as a LinkedIn account executive to work for the British Council after becoming frustrated with a lack of social mobility in the jobs market.
“I was based in Dublin because of the LinkedIn graduate scheme, but every eight weeks or so, I would go back home to see my family and friends,” Izunwa tells UKTN. “Almost every time, I had this realisation that while I was living comfortably in Dublin, with a lovely apartment and great holidays, my immediate family’s life and the lives of my old school friends hadn’t changed.
“This discrepancy made me keenly aware of my social mobility, but also of my inability to bring the people I cared about with me on that journey.”
Izunwa says he went through four rounds of interviews over three weeks with LinkedIn to get the sales job, yet heard of privately educated colleagues referring their friends who would then land top jobs.
These experiences forced him to leave the corporate world and focus on social mobility.
Izunwa left to work for the British Council, an organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities, in the hope he could make some “real impact”. However, he soon realised that public sector “bureaucracy” meant implementing change would be “harder” than he thought.
In 2022, Izunwa took the plunge again to build a social mobility startup with co-founder Joe Adams. Using his lived experiences and knowledge of creating social mobility programmes he launched Tangent, an employee referral platform aiming to make referrals accessible to everyone – no matter their background.
Currently, the AI-powered platform works with mentors from Multiverse, Uber, HubSpot, Revolut, Stripe, ReachDesk, and Amazon to support the transition of talent from diverse backgrounds into the tech ecosystem.
It raised $1.1m (£882,000) back in April and is now out of the beta stage. This pre-seed funding included participation from Google Black Founders Fund, Syndicate Room, Scouts from Atomico and Ada Ventures, and others.
Ironically, Izunwa says he secured a lot of his investment through referrals and LinkedIn.
Levelling the playing field
Job seekers log on to the Tangent platform and create a video introduction, with an in-built AI tool generating a bespoke script. The startup is also developing AI tools to match job seekers with mentors based on their preferences and industry goals. Mentors can view video introductions ahead of committing to the mentorship.
Once matched, mentors can then provide job seekers with referrals. Izunwa says Tangent has already had some notable success stories.
“One of the stories that always touches my heart is a lady called Tricia Carr,” he says. “She didn’t go to university; she’s in her early 20s and was working as a charity fundraiser. Her job was entirely commission-based. Ironically, she was working outside a station one day and was trying to pitch to this guy… he turned out to be a mentor on Tangent who recommended her to join our platform because he liked the way she pitched.
“She did her video introduction, and not long after, she met Sarah, an ad account executive at ReachDesk, and three weeks later, Sarah got her into the role. She started a month ago on a £36,000 a year salary, and her office is a five-minute walk away from the tube station she used to fundraise at.”
Izunwa says the focus for Tangent right now is building engagement on the platform, rather than revenue.
“Having said that, our broad thesis is that companies will be the ones to pay so it will be free for job seekers,” he explains. “We will charge companies a subscription to source candidates through our talent pool, which we’ve seen promising results from early clients such as Multiverse and GoCardless.”
Izunwa set out to level the playing field for job seekers lacking industry connections. But is a referral system still a form of nepotism?
“Referrals in their current form are a nepotistic recruitment channel, as you can only be referred into a company if you know someone who works at that company, i.e., you are a friend or family member of an employee,” says Izunwa.
“If you don’t already have privileged networks – which people from low socioeconomic backgrounds don’t tend to have – you can never get referred as it’s entirely based on your connections. We solve that by offering a platform that builds trust between strangers to allow referrals to be accessible to those who typically cannot access them.”
The post Meet Tangent, the startup shaking up job referrals to boost social mobility appeared first on UKTN.
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