Brian's Odyssey: Paving the Way for Equality in the Job Market

Sector: HR Tech

Tell us about yourself, and what inspired you to launch Odyssey.

I was a first-gen college student trying to break into finance – and that whole process is absolutely miserable, right? You realize very quickly how important access and connections are. It wasn't necessarily who was working the hardest, or who had  the most grit, or who was the best fit for the role, but a lot of times, I saw people who just had relationships in the industry and so, had an edge. Their access meant they got the introductions, they knew how to speak during the interviews, and they knew the details that mattered for winning placements. 

So, I really became obsessed with that issue of how talent is evenly distributed, but opportunities are not, and how can we collapse that gap between talent and opportunities. And with companies incentivized to make it more equitable because they're missing out on top talent, to me, that means that gap is something that should collapse over time.

You eventually broke into finance, though. How did that jump from finance onto addressing this issue take place? 

I was working at a hedge fund for a while and got involved with different mentoring programs.  But I saw that, as amazing as the programs were when I was actually helping somebody, getting to that stage of having the conversation took a lot of time and effort – it was a long and structured commitment that just wasn’t designed for today’s world. If you're working a busy job, like finance, consulting or tech, it’s nearly impossible to consistently commit to their rigid schedule, especially in-person. 

So, the original thesis I had for Odyssey was to make it more flexible for professionals to mentor, unlocking this huge pool of people who I saw that wanted to help out, but didn’t have the flexibility in their schedule for current programs.  So, I left the hedge fund and joined Columbia Business School, where I spent two years running a bunch of pilots around this first thesis for how to solve this problem I had been obsessed with.

And what was most significant to you in doing that transition?

I loved what I was doing at the hedge fund, but after selling an investment I’d be back to square one – researching a new investment – and without a real tangible impact outside of the PnL. I wanted to build something and feel like I was making a difference. I wanted to do something that had an impact on people’s lives that I could see in a much more tangible way.  

Odyssey has given me that. Now, when we build a new feature, that feature exists, and we'll build another one on top of that. There's that stacking, and with it we're creating a tangible impact. With what we've been doing for the past few years, we get a ton of people reaching out because with our help they’ve landed at amazing companies and we’ve given them an opportunity that they wouldn't have had otherwise, and it's just really fulfilling to be a part of that.

And how did your Columbia experience shape your journey?

I was at the fund for seven years and just hyper focused on what we were doing on a day-to-day basis, so I essentially had this tunnel vision. Going to Columbia and meeting amazing people from all different walks of life, industries, geographies and ways of thinking was great for opening my eyes and giving me a much broader understanding. The different perspectives I was able to gain were a huge benefit to me, and definitely helped shape who I've become as the founder of Odyssey.

After running trials around that initial hypothesis, how did Odyssey shape up to what it now is?

What we had been doing for the last two years is recruiting about 400  professionals from Finance, tech and consulting, and giving them flexible connections to about 3,800 underrepresented students across the country. We were then monetizing by having companies come in and recruit those students, primarily through events.

But we saw that the best hires were those where a volunteer, who happened to be from the same company that was recruiting our candidates, essentially made a referral. Companies love referrals because they’re the quickest time-to-hire, better retention, etc – but they typically lack diversity because of the network gap those candidates face. Except ours weren’t! Actually, professionals were volunteering exactly because the candidates were out-of-network.

The market was showing us the real opportunity, and this was despite it needing to happen in a really disjointed way, with the recruiting and volunteering being completely separate in our old model. So, we saw this massive opportunity that was right under our nose, and shifted our focus to build software that would help companies create these employee-to-candidate recruitment connections and drive hiring in a really seamless way.

And what’s next for Odyssey?

We made this pivot and we've been building up the software for the past six months, which we're launching next month with some amazing trial partners. The software's focused on giving talent acquisition the tools to mobilize their employees to connect with relevant underrepresented candidates.

For example, a company might have an engineering vacancy and say “Hey, here’s the candidate criteria we're putting in the system” and then invite, say, anybody on the engineering team who wants to host Odysseys, which can be anything from 15-minute one-to-ones, to 30-minute small group chats, or whatever the individual would like to do.  Talent acquisition can then share the Odyssey version of their job post, which includes those opportunities to connect with the team if you’re a qualified candidate.

So now, all of a sudden, instead of an underrepresented candidate seeing a job post, not knowing anybody at the firm and automatically being at a huge disadvantage, candidates are going to see Odysseys and break down that network gap. And companies are going to not only attract these candidates with the Odysseys, but also win hires who will start with a day-0 support network. 

Can you tell us about the relationships that you’ll be fostering through this pivot?

With the pivot we’ve done, the conversations that employees and candidates will be having will be much more relevant. Up to now, what we’d been seeing was candidates blasting employees on LinkedIn without really knowing who to connect with. Then the employees are not sure who to have a chat with, since they don’t have time for everyone. So they pick someone to have a conversation, but then it’s not relevant, either the candidate was ill-informed, or the conversation was not productive. Now, we can give them the tools to make sure those conversations are meaningful. We’re giving Talent Acquisition the tools to help ensure only relevant candidates who have a shot, and providing the support for what to talk about. So basically, we're becoming this bridge between an organization’s employees and the whole outside world of out-of-network, underrepresented candidates out there.

It's a huge need right? For students, it doesn't make sense that your network determines the roles you can access. And for companies, about 80% of jobs have some networking component, so just imagine all the talent they're missing out on because the person happens to not be in a relevant network. Imagine a student – they're an all-star, but they don't have any connection or insight into the firm, or any way to get an edge, so their resume just goes to the black hole of resumes, or they don’t even apply because they don't even know what it would be like to work there. So, the companies we talk to are really excited about Odyssey, and we’re super excited to be launching the new program.

What’s one thing you've learned that you'd like to share with other Founders?

It’s cliché but I'd say absolutely the most important thing is to work hard and not give up. Not giving up means learning to listen to yourself, having confidence in what you believe and what you're passionate about, and the willingness to put in the effort. Listen to enough startup journeys, and you’ll see a clear pattern. It’s not that the successful startups don’t run into what seem like unsurmountable obstacles, almost every one did, it’s that they’re the startups who keep trying and figure out a way. So you need to keep pushing if you're going to be successful. In the long run it's worth it to keep grinding and having that resilience, that’s what life’s all about.