The Unlikely Entrepreneur Lighting up the Way for Diverse Job-Seekers
As our country fights for rightful equality and inclusive opportunities, I wanted to share the inspiring story of Ruben Harris — a delightfully authentic and exuberant Atlanta native who is building products that break down the professional barriers he faced earlier in his career. Ruben is the CEO of Career Karma, a YC-backed startup that is taking the Edtech industry by storm.
In this article, we talk about Ruben’s upbringing, Career Karma’s rapid growth, and our vision for the future of bootcamps.
What’s Career Karma?
Career Karma is a managed marketplace that matches career transitioners with job training programs.
Selecting the right education program is hard—to applicants, offerings can seem undifferentiated and student reviews difficult to navigate.
It’s a tricky problem for education providers too — 20% of education budgets go towards trying to enroll students, similar to how 40% of VC funding goes to Google & Facebook ads. Career Karma is building a vertical search engine focused on career advice and community for bootcamps.
Career Karma offers students:
1:1 Guidance on Navigating Programs
Industry Mentorship
Community (‘squad’) to ensure accountability through completion
Recruiting Opportunities
They’ve seen explosive growth since launching: 300K+ monthly web users and 100K+ monthly mobile users. They’re projecting 1M+ monthly users by end of the year.
Let’s talk about your upbringing. What led you to build Career Karma?
I went to small religious schools while growing up and wasn’t exposed to the corporate world. When I graduated from college, I didn’t have the internships or case interview prep that I would need to get into banking. Everyone told me that it was impossible for me to do it.
So I cold-emailed 1900+ people, sent hundreds of applications, and, finally, landed a job at BMO Capital Markets as an investment banker. I blogged about my experience and 7000 people from non-traditional backgrounds reached out to ask for help breaking into investment banking. I helped 50 people from small schools get the job — and that’s when I discovered that the traditional ways of hiring really miss out on talented people.
In the early 2010’s, industry appeal shifted from finance to tech and led to the rise of bootcamps. I wanted a job in tech, so I began by building relationships with VCs over Twitter.
In September 2014, I came to visit San Francisco — and just never left. I moved into a house with 14 people, sent out a bunch of emails, and a few weeks later, I landed a job at AltSchool.
I wrote a story about Breaking into Startups that blew up and got millions of views. That turned into a second blog post called The Reality of Breaking into Startups which then became a podcast that reached millions of people who wanted to break into tech.
Bootcamps started reaching out to us, asking if they could pay for the leads we were getting—and Career Karma was born.
Photo: Ruben Harris, Felicia Horowitz, Chris Lyons, Nait Jones, Ben Horowitz (December 6, 2014)
What’s the demographic of Career Karma users?
Over 40 million people lost their job because of COVID-19. That’s our demographic. Career Karma users are typically between 25 and 40 years old and are mostly women and people of color. Our users are parents, retail workers, construction workers, teachers, and nurses. From an education perspective, we see people with no degree, some college experience, or even college graduates who are doing a job they don’t want to do. In the past year, we’ve even seen mechanical engineers, civil engineers, doctors, lawyers, and professional athletes — just anyone looking to build a better life with a career in tech.
What could the future of bootcamps look like?
In the past 7 years, we’ve seen bootcamps evolve by coming 100% online, providing outcomes-oriented financing, and building partnerships with employers that have made it easier for graduates to get jobs.
Career Karma: State of the Bootcamp Market 2020
Since the virus hit, online growth for bootcamps is going crazy. It’s time that we recreate certain aspects of bootcamps to support the next segment of career transitioners.
1/ Remake the Admissions Process
Bootcamps initially formed really tough admissions processes. But just like the trend in college admissions — when schools are acknowledging that the SAT/ACT/GMAT aren’t great indicators of skill — that’s changing. Out of the 40M people who are unemployed now, the majority don’t know how to code. So even if you’ve got the best marketing team in the world, you wouldn’t be able to reach out and enroll them.
What needs to happen:
Free Prep Courses since people don’t have $400 in savings to test out new fields
Entrance Exams focused on grit and aptitude, not background or experiences (“Are you someone who is really going to finish the program?”)
Given the relatively open enrollment policies, bootcamps aren’t prestigious to get accepted into. They’re prestigious to graduate from.
The Admissions Process that people historically thought was a good filter for talent actually ends up pushing students away from your program. In order to scale and serve the population, bootcamps have to modify their admissions process so it doesn’t emulate established institutions.
2/ Extend the Length of Programs
Similar to how investors suggest founders have a runway of 18 to 24 months, bootcamps have to extend the duration of programs to give the labor market some time to recover.
It’s important to give students practical work projects aligned with their backgrounds to practice during this time.
3/ Better leverage Your Alumni Networks
Bootcamps have reached a point where they have thousands of alumni, many placed at top tech companies. Bootcamps should start investing more in activating alumni networks and developing student loyalty to enable job referrals for future students.
Alumni at traditional education institutions were bound by the eliteness of admissions, while the graduates of bootcamps will be bound by the shared sense of difficulty and rigor they endured in order to land their jobs. It’s important for bootcamps to tap into that and leverage those networks to create amazing new opportunities for future students.
Career Karma: State of the Bootcamp Market 2020
We can all help more diverse talent land into tech. Know someone who you think can excel in the field? Have them check out Career Karma.
PS: I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of academic prestige in the age of online education & life-long learning. Let me know if you have any thoughts on that!