Change is afoot in many industries but it’s especially needed in the realms of tech. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement, there are some great new ventures cropping up and one such enterprise is Skilltype.
Its founder, Tony Zanders, took to Medium to announce the launch of Skilltype, a “talent marketplace for information professionals and their teams to analyze, grow, and share expertise”.
About Tony Zanders
Tony Zanders is a software entrepreneur and former global software consultant with clientele across the US and Europe. He has worked for the likes of Boston University, EBSCO, and Ex Libris but he now focuses on helping libraries prepare for the future as the CEO of Skilltype.
In the announcement post, he addressed the idea of people “recognising their discriminatory past” and how processes in tech, work and recruitment had changed:
Launching a job search was the dominant method to add expertise to our team. Our collaborations were still focused on content and systems. We’ve since seen our budgets cut and our hiring frozen. We see our large gatherings cancelled and our travel prohibited. Our workshops and gatherings moved online. When the dust settles, we will need a new paradigm for understanding what expertise we need to serve our rapidly-changing organizations, and how to get it.
What does Skilltype do?
Skilltype combines the efforts and knowledge of non-profits, libraries and associations, to create a system that changes the way we interact with professionals and their skills using the following concepts:
- Describing yourself
- Exploring resources
- Connecting with companies
- Refinement of interests and changes over time
These are the fundamental aspects of commerce but in the past (and present), these concepts have been inefficient and heavily biased towards a small but affluent subset of society—predominately White cis males between the ages of 35-60.
Skilltype breaks free of that mould and creates new cycles of improved information that benefits both prospective employees and employers.
You can sign up for early access to Skilltype by heading over to their website or by tweeting them: @skilltype.