Inside ANONYMOUS
Philanthropy has the power to change the world, but money alone won’t solve the world’s most pressing problems. It takes bold, innovative thinking, strategic action, and the right collaborators to drive real progress.
For two decades we’ve done just that, partnering with clients and allies to transform visionary ideas into profound impact. Whether we are tackling childhood drowning or creating spaces for our nation’s veterans to heal, we are committed to maximizing the impact and fulfillment of every philanthropic dollar.
When people learn about the work that we do, they often ask: How does your company do what you do? How do you think the way you think?
So we decided to pull back the curtain a bit, and share some of the ideas, insights, inspiration, and stories behind the impact we make and fulfillment we create.
This blog is where we’ll do that, and we think a great place to begin is with a recent A-HA! moment that moved the needle for one of our key initiatives.
First, some context:
IT BEGINS WITH AN ECONOMIST’S DREAM
At a time when our country is facing a labor shortage, we have a client who believes that our economy is being held back by the lack of career opportunities facing millions of justice-impacted individuals.
The statistics speak to his concerns:
Our client believes all people who have legally served their time deserve a fair chance at gainful employment, and he challenged us to address second chance employment at scale.
Over the years, we’ve taken several approaches, engaging experts and advisors in the field, collaborating with nonprofits, and providing grants to best-in-class organizations working on this issue.
But by 2021, it became clear that while we were making strides, we hadn’t cracked the code. We weren’t solving the problem at the level we hoped. So, we took a step back, and embarked on a listening tour.
Second chance expert and Talent Nova advisor, Khalilah T. Olokunola
We spent the next nine months meeting with HR execs from major corporations, business leaders, and nonprofits specializing in employment placement. What we discovered was extremely promising — there are lots of great organizations working to connect justice-impacted job seekers with opportunities.
Yet, despite all this energy and goodwill, it wasn’t happening.
We asked ourselves: if everyone wants to help, why isn’t it working?
THE ANSWER WAS HIDING IN SIGHT
Sometimes the most challenging problems aren’t solved just by knowing a space well, but by recognizing the blind spots within it. “Hidden padlocks,” as we call them, are the overlooked barriers, the assumptions people take for granted, and they’re found in the areas no one thinks to explore. That’s where the most creative and efficient answers often reside. And in the case of second chance employment, we realized that the hidden padlock was in plain sight — easy access to a free professional resume and cover letter.
While there are hundreds of organizations across the country dedicated to helping formerly-incarcerated people get jobs, relatively few of them have expert writers on staff. And even if they do, the process of crafting a professional resume and personalized cover letter can be so time consuming that they can’t possibly keep up with their caseload. The problem was scalability.
This revelation came right around the time AI was gaining momentum, and we saw an opportunity to address this problem at scale.
The result was TALENT NOVA.
A CUTTING-EDGE CAREER PLATFORM
Talent Nova is a groundbreaking career development platform that helps justice-impacted job seekers overcome systemic barriers to employment.
Here are some of the key features:
AI RESUME & COVER LETTER BUILDER
The crown jewel is an AI-powered resume and cover letter generator. The platform guides users through a series of questions, and in what feels like a magic trick, it quickly translates their personal experiences — whether from formal jobs or life situations — into marketable skills.
The results are instant and kind of astonishing.
LIVE COACHING
Looking for a job can be super stressful. It helps to have a coach in your corner.
Sign up for a free session and get unique insights, info, and inspo from HR professionals and second chance hiring experts
24/7 virtual ASSISTANT
Using AI that’s been trained by the leading experts in the second chance employment space using people-first, trauma-informed language, Talent Nova’s Coachbot supports and motivates candidates as they navigate the job hunt. And it’s always getting smarter as it “learns” more about user needs.
VIDEO LEARNING LIBRARY
Talent Nova offers a resource library to help navigate the job hiring process. Video courses like the 11-part Interview Prep Series cover the most common questions candidates face, helping them understand what to expect and how to impress.
TALENT NOVA (Quietly) GOES LIVE!
We soft launched a beta version this past summer with the help of key partners like The Last Mile and Tennessee Office of Reentry. We set up in-person activations at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office so we could watch job seekers as they navigated the platform. Even though the technology is built to scale, we wanted to make sure we really got it right before amplifying awareness.
Our instinct was right, for while the tech was undoubtedly powerful, the initial metrics left us scratching our heads. We had a lot of users, but not a lot of resumes. Only a small percentage of them were going through all the necessary steps to get to the end, and we couldn’t understand why.
The insight we needed — the A-HA! moment — came from someone who spent nearly two decades behind bars.
THE FLINTSTONES VS THE JETSONS
Shaka Senghor is the author of the New York Times bestseller, “Writing My Wrongs,” a gritty memoir which chronicles the cycle of poverty and violence that led him to prison as a kid, and his subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption. Now a celebrated criminal justice advocate, Shaka is a powerful testament to the promise of second chances — and an advisor for Talent Nova.
We had the privilege of hosting Shaka this summer at Impact Day, our company’s annual, all-hands retreat. He delivered the closing speech, and not only was it incredibly inspiring, something he said illuminated a product design flaw.
“You’ve got to understand the mindset of someone who is formerly incarcerated. When you get put away the world is like the Flintstones, and when you get out it’s the Jetsons.”
And just like that, we realized the problem with Talent Nova — we built the Jetsons!
Which makes sense. We didn’t set out to create a basic platform with free tools and resources for this population. We wanted to inspire them. We wanted them to see how deeply invested we were in their success, and feel like someone built a Batmobile just for them. However, in our push to create a state-of-the-art product, we missed the fact that our audience might not have that level of experience, understanding, or technological savvy. We belled and whistled it up too much.
So, we went back to the lab and completely overhauled the UI/UX. We eliminated friction and increased clarity. We created a more intuitive and user-friendly experience. We met users where they are and the impact was immediate.
Within the first month, we saw a 70% spike in the number of resumes created. And now, nearly 80% of users are making it through all the steps to get a resume and cover letter.
Thanks to Shaka’s insights and our user-centric redesign, Talent Nova is now better equipped to serve this population — and our client’s mission of unlocking the full potential of the American economy.
