A Chat with Sophie O’Brien, Founder at Entry Level Recruitment Platform: Pollen Careers

Tell us about Pollen Careers

Pollen is a careers platform on a mission to empower entry-level job seekers and champion SMEs to enhance their hiring reach and quality.

We at Pollen believe that traditional screening methods contribute to ineffective and biassed hiring processes that disadvantage those without elite qualifications or extensive work experience. Additionally, despite their potential for offering enriching work environments, SMEs often go unnoticed by young job seekers due to limited brand exposure.

Pollen is changing this by innovating how young job seekers access personalised support, skills and opportunities they need to thrive, and  provide employers with access to a diverse pool of talented individuals ready to make an impact.

Instead of reviewing previous experience, we use a CV-less recruitment tool that uses behavioural-science and competency-based assessments to match junior talent with their employers based on capabilities, values, and potential.

We are on a mission to build a sustainable future of work where everyone has the chance to succeed!

What do you think makes this company unique?

What makes Pollen different is the intentional and equitable way that we approach recruitment. Rather than using CVs to screen our candidates, we have chosen to analyse applicants on a deeper level. Instead of looking to see whether someone has the right experience for a job, we look at skills and compatibility. Through our CV-less screening tool, we are able to assess people based on their values, personal strengths, and behaviours – very critical attributes that cannot be evaluated through a CV.

We are also unique in how we work with companies and how we support our candidates.

When we work with businesses, we have a specific set of hiring standards to ensure that it’s a positive experience for everyone involved and ensure the hiring process is effective. We’ve established strict terms & conditions for employers, mandating fair living wages, open and timely communication, and adherence to our inclusive & equitable hiring practices. We also require employers to not ask for previous experience, specific experience, or a degree. Instead, we ask that they assess a candidate on capabilities, attributes and values.

Our main priority is to provide a seamless, supportive and positive experience for junior job seekers.

We’re different in that we don’t believe the job-hunting process should be transactional. Many platforms and agencies prioritise roles that are lucrative for them, often side-lining the candidate experience and diversity in favour of roles at large corporations. We want candidates to know we’re listening to them and what they want from a job, so that we can place them in a company and role that will enable them to thrive. We understand that meaningful impact does not come from prolonged interactions but from effective, empowering support that leads to sustainable employment.

We also don’t believe in mass application culture. Job boards often lead to a scattergun approach, where job seekers apply to roles en masse, resulting in inefficiencies and a lack of relevance for both job seekers and employers.

Lastly, we hold a community-first ethos. We prioritise the needs and development of job seekers, in turn connecting employers to confident, engaged and skilled candidates. We support our community by giving them tools and opportunities that will help them in their career, including our podcast which offers insights and advice from seasoned professionals, our mentor directory, a resource hub, a Slack channel offering support and guidance, as well as our Hidden Jobs newsletter which has helped our community to access over 300 hidden jobs!

How has the company evolved over the last couple of years?

The business was launched just last year, so we’re still pretty new! However, we’ve grown quite quickly in the space of a year. So far we’re now a team of seven, raised over £100k in funding, and worked with some amazing companies helping them to fill over 20 roles.

Excitingly, we’ve just launched our new Employer Membership that helps companies boost their exposure by sharing their roles to the Pollen community. They also gain accreditation to tap into our amazing community of diverse junior talent, and to get recognised for the fair hiring standards they already adopt.

What can we hope to see from Pollen Careers in the future?

For the short-term, we want to hire more members of the team to support demand and grow our community of mentors and candidates.

Long-term, we really want to establish Pollen Careers as the go-to for employers to hire brilliant entry-level talent. We want to change the way that companies hire to make it a more fair and equitable process. We also want to introduce more innovation in this space, by enhancing our CV-less match-making tool to scale our offering.