Welcome to SkillCat. We're a team out of Stanford University trying to solve our time's biggest social problem: non-college educated workers do not have access to middle-class jobs. We train & place blue collar workers into high demand skilled trade jobs in construction, telecom, and energy through our virtual simulator. We've trained 25,000 workers so far, and we're working with some of the world's largest companies.
Here are a few articles that highlight elements of SkillCat's vision.
1) We Need To Re-Design Worker Training
“Without a specific job at the other end, no one is going to waste their time retraining just to retrain.” - The Atlantic
Millions of American's lost their manufacturing jobs to automation or overseas competition. America has been stuck trying to find a way to re-skill these workers into other areas. Government programs aren't working.
We need a radically different way of re-skilling workers. SkillCat is changing worker training by getting our students a job in growing industries after they graduate. Find out more here.
"Between 1973 and 2015, real hourly earnings for the typical 25-54-year-old man with only a high school degree declined by 18.2 percent, while real hourly earnings for college-educated men increased substantially." - National Bureau of Economic Research
Non-college educated workers cannot get access to well paying middle-class jobs. SkillCat will fix this by using simulations to train non-college educated workers and place them into high paying skilled trades.
“We have a very skilled workforce, but they are getting older...I don’t know where we are going to find replacements.” - Karen Wright, the CEO of Ariel Corporation
Skilled labor companies are booming, but they cannot find enough talent to meet demand. America needs to shift its focus to training unemployed workers into skilled trades instead of pushing them through expensive colleges. Find out more here.
"Job training in America has often been ineffective, with programs shaped by local politics and money spent according to the number of people in courses rather than hiring outcomes." - The New York Times
Training companies need to have the right incentive. Getting graduates jobs. SkillCat makes money by placing the workers who have gone through our training. We are incentivized to deliver results. COVID highlights this difference, as hundreds of thousands of people finish re-skilling, and can't find a job. Find out more here.
"Startups and investors believe that the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate trends towards niche job and career sites and away from generalist sites like LinkedIn and Indeed." - Wall Street Journal
Linkedin and Indeed flood companies HR departments with applicants with no screening, certification verification, or experience. Niche sites like SkillCat show employers verified and pre-screened workers, who are looking for work in the skilled trades. Find out more here.