ThisWay Global Founder Angela Hood on Hiring and Diversity

ThisWay matches people to jobs instantly and without bias and helps to improve diversity in teams. Our technology sits inside applicant tracking systems and processes applicants from online platforms, like job boards and CRMs.

There are few things more important than having a level playing field regarding work. It’s a hard problem to solve, but an easy problem to be passionate about. Solving this problem has never been more important than it is today.

As a woman who works in male dominated fields, I have experienced bias. And as an entrepreneur I have benefitted by having diverse teams help me bring solutions to market.  Being able to leverage my own experience in a $470 billion market is an ideal circumstance when you are an entrepreneur.

It’s important that businesses use math and science, through technology, in areas where it can have a meaningful impact — like in talent acquisition. Our tech also helps provide a better work/life balance for the recruiters, hiring managers and business owners that benefit from our matching. Improving the lives of our users is an important part of our vision and serves as a strong guide for our product team.

My CTO and I were introduced by three different technology mentors of mine. They were excellent recommendations. Alex is an expert technologist as well as incredibly intelligent, and I genuinely love working with him. Nearly everyone else was found through the use of our technology, and they are all uniquely qualified to help solve this problem.

Our most significant differentiation is our focus, accuracy and ability to sit natively inside our users’ workflow. Focus is important because it enables you to be the best at what you do. 

We are accurate because matching without bias is our sole focus, and we meet our user where they are already working because that is what causes them the greatest amount of delight.

We have two business models: annual SaaS and pay as you go. The first provides the best solution for employers that hire in larger volumes — so staffing, mid-market and enterprise level organizations. The latter provides startups and smaller employers with lower use products.

During a quarterly off-site with our company we identified that although we have always focused on leveling the playing field within the job market, we had done very little to increase the diversity of our investment partners. The majority of our company is owned by women, but we lacked ethinic and geographic diversity. And when I learned about the demographics of equity crowdfunding investors, it aligned well with our goal of diversification. 

We now have investors from over 40 countries and from every state in the US. While I don’t know the specific demographics of our 1000+ investors, I do know that we have a much wider range of supportive investors. It’s a great outcome.

The additional investment is being used to ramp up sales and marketing and develop a piece of technology that will transform the speed and ease at which companies can integrate new technologies. It’s a very exciting time for us!

Our team is intentionally small with incredible expertise. But all the expertise in the world can’t account for the passion and resiliency required to grow a meaningful, early stage venture. Above all else, our resiliency has led to current success and will continue to do so as we grow and dominate that market.

Our company receives acquisition offers on a regular basis but so far none have aligned with what I, our leadership and our investors are seeking as the desired outcome. We have both revenue and job matching goals that we align to our success metrics. Ultimately, nothing short of being the ‘go to’ for unbiased matching in the job market would be acceptable. I do believe we will achieve this through strategic partnerships and/or eventual acquisition, but an IPO strategy is now being developed.