Homeless to founder: Earlybird.ai unlocks the potential of overlooked communities.
Claudine Adeyemi-Adams' story is nothing short of inspirational. Her "why" is very aligned with her startup. An entrepreneur who's overcome adversity and wants to help others do the same at scale.
💼 Earlybird.ai is hiring for a senior founders associate.
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I hate the phrase "cultural fit". It's a thinly veiled way that companies justify hiring people who "assimilate" with their existing team. You should build a team in a completely different way.
Claudine Adeyemi-Adams, Co-Founder & CEO, Earlybird.ai
You may have previously heard stories of 2nd generation immigrants taking the well-trodden path of going to university, getting a prestigious job and living happily ever after. However, the story is rarely that simple. Claudine is one such story, but one that's harder than most.
At age 5, her mother passed away. From a very early age, she decided to make her proud by becoming a lawyer. She didn't have examples of people around her being lawyers or a relevant network, so she forced her way in through sheer determination and resourcefulness. At 16, she'd print her CV, walk into law firms and ask: "Can I get some work experience?"
It worked and also served as a springboard for getting into a top university, UCL, and then a prestigious law firm, Mishcon de Reya. However, her experience was not what she expected.
I didn't realize until I arrived at the firm that my peers were from very different backgrounds. I was the exception to the rule and stood out like a sore thumb. I remember telling my friends I wanted to quit because I thought I'd never be able to make this environment work for me without feeling like an absolute fraud.
This experience would later inspire her to build Earlybird, a platform working to transform employment support, focusing on people in less fortunate positions.
I'm focused on people who are in less fortunate positions. They are in lower-paid roles and not at a desk all day, so they can't use the HR tech tools created in the past decades for a tiny proportion of the workforce (80% is not based at a desk).
Earlybird is a conversational AI assistant that supports job seekers and employees. It's embedded in employment support organizations and deployed to workforces with deskless frontline workers as a support tool. The National Audit Office has found that only 25% of people who get help from employment support organizations end up in employment. Getting people into work and keeping them there is hugely important.
In this post, we talk to Claudine about:
Breaking down cultural barriers
The flaws in a traditional interview process
How Applicants Can Stand Out in 2024
How AI is changing the game in hiring
1. Breaking Down Cultural Barriers
We started our conversation by reminiscing about the "cultural shocks" we faced when we began our careers.
I've been in conversations about which Michelin-starred restaurant is your favourite for client dinners or what the right wine is for a particular meal. The expectation is that you'll just know. The reality is far from that.
This story resonates strongly. In my first graduate job at Morgan Stanley, I recall conversations with other grads about holiday destinations. "Where do you ski?" I did not do not: I'm Colombian and not built for cold weather 😅 .
Many of us who have gone through these experiences end up feeling a "responsibility" to help others navigate similar situations. Whether offering advice, helping with resume reviews, or making introductions, I've heard many stories of people "paying it forward." Claudine is no exception.
I'm open if candidates have questions or want feedback. I've had people reach out on LinkedIn saying they'd love advice or whether I can share any tips for how they can improve their applications. I'm always happy to answer questions on those types of things. I encountered a candidate who impressed me last year when we weren't actively hiring. I took her details, got her to write an anonymous bio, and then shared it in a few different founder groups. I jumped on a call with her to help her prepare for an interview, and she ultimately got a job pretty quickly.
We're big fans of this approach and have used this newsletter to open our networks to people who may not have a great network yet. Networks are everything, but standing out on LinkedIn is becoming increasingly difficult. We see more and more people hired through private groups and communities. If you're in one of these and can help a candidate you find impressive, please do so.
Whether it's helping candidates to navigate alien (to them) environments or opening up your network, there's probably someone who gave you a helping hand when you were starting your career - just remember that next time you have an opportunity to help: there are people that come to a job application already at a disadvantage, so offering a helping hand can help to balance things out. This is central to Claudine's mission:
My whole career has been focused on unlocking the potential of individuals from overlooked communities—those who don't perceive themselves to have the potential because they just don't see examples of themselves in certain environments. There's a misalignment of what potential can look like from the enterprise/corporate side. My whole career has been about connecting those dots.
2. The flaws in a traditional interview process
Claudine also has a refreshing take on interviewing. She "levels the playing field" by assessing candidates based on how they work on problems.
I have strong views that interview processes haven't evolved. There's this perception that someone's prepped for an interview and rehearsed all of these interview answers in the STAR format. In practice, we work on problems very differently, so I like it when people approach things differently in the interview. I think the traditional formats do not allow people to bring the best versions of themselves to an interview.
We could not agree more. Many interview processes can feel performative and frankly unnecessary. We've seen some AI tools that claim to help with these "performances", and we see this as the wrong problem to focus on. Rather than getting a candidate to "perform" in an interview, hiring managers can use the interview process to see how candidates would do the job in practice.
Hiring managers can pay candidates for a short work trial. They can see how they prompt chatGPT or Claude during an interview. These tactics will give hiring managers many more signals than asking "What's your biggest weakness?" or "Tell me about a time when…" questions.
In Claudine's case, she uses the interview to look for mission alignment and passion.
In our case, it's obvious when a candidate aligns with our mission. Candidates who can express themselves in a way that conveys passion always shine. It's not necessarily what they say but how they say it. I had an interview recently, and when I asked about our mission, one candidate couldn't contain herself. You could tell she was getting irritated by the problem. Compare that to someone saying: I found it hard to get a job, and that's it. When someone's passionate about something, they spend a lot of time thinking about it. So you can tell that from their response because it's much more thoughtful and profound than the surface level.
Yes, STAR-formatted answers can help a candidate structure their story. But genuine passion and mission alignment? Those are not things you can prepare for or rehearse.
Claudine's approach to interviewing is proof of her commitment to fairness. She conducts a 20-minute screening process in which all candidates receive the same questions, regardless of where they came from (referrals included). Could you argue that this doesn't scale? Sure. But at this stage, when her startup has fewer than ten people, doing things that don't scale is the name of the game, and few things have as much of a multiplier effect as hiring does.
3. Standing Out in the Age of AI
The world has moved on significantly since most of us were first looking for jobs. Replicating Claudine's tenacity at 16 to walk into a law firm and ask for work experience would be difficult. Many companies are remote-first, and with tight budgets, there is little room for entry-level candidates.
I think the challenge is the impact of COVID and the fact that people aren't necessarily in the office anymore. So you can turn up, but is it worth it if it's an office that no one frequents anymore?
Claudine believes there are still ways to stand out, though.
If I were an entry-level candidate in today's market, I would attend networking events in my industry. If I saw an entry-level candidate at one of those events, I'd find that impressive because their peers are not there. The candidate has to be passionate about the sector or getting a role in this space to be there.
We also believe that networking is one of the best things you can do for your career. Having a personal connection—no matter how small—to those in the industry can make the difference between a candidate getting rejected and getting their foot in the door. This difference allows candidates to build rapport, but Claudine advises against directly asking for mentorship.
Don't ask for mentorship. Ask for advice. I've got this specific thing that I want help with. Can you help me? And then going back and saying: your advice was really useful. Before you know it, people are mentors without even realizing it.
We agree with this viewpoint. Directly asking for mentorship makes a relationship feel very transactional, and offering advice is much more close-ended than offering general mentorship. Senior people tend to be very busy, so candidates should be mindful about how they ask for their time. It's a gratifying experience; helping inexperienced people position themselves is a great way to pay it forward.
4. The AI Revolution in Hiring
Claudine takes a pragmatic view of AI in hiring
I've assumed that most people will use ChatGPT in their applications. It would be a little bit weird not to if you have a tool to help you create the best version of your application.
We should all leverage AI to be more efficient. In the future, not using AI may be like not using the Internet.
However, Claudine certainly believes there are right and wrong ways to use AI.
I think candidates using AI should just take precautions and ensure they're using it to help streamline the process, not to replace having any input.
We agree. We have seen numerous applications where it was obvious that a candidate used AI to automate answers entirely. This gives the impression that a candidate is not thoughtful and completely removes anything unique about them. We have regularly talked about standing out and creating connections with people. Candidates should use AI to remove the tedious work and add their unique spin to an application because finding a job will only become harder as AI improves.
AI will replace much of the work you might have given to an intern. I think entry-level talent must find ways to show how AI makes them a force multiplier.
It isn't all doom and gloom, though. With products like Earlybird, we will regain time from all the administrative and tedious work.
Particularly employment support roles. It's easy to get burnt out and overwhelmed with the administrative work involved. Taking that away with AI is just creating a job that people love more because they're freer to do the work they enjoy rather than the monotonous side of it.
We also believe that focusing on the creative parts of the job will result in more fulfilled employees. This will create a fundamental shift for employment in the future, and we will have to start testing candidates differently to include their aptitude for using AI systems and more of their soft skills.
Conclusion
Nobody will stand up for you better than yourself; Claudine is a prime example. Fighting through traumatic circumstances, she advocated for herself at 16 to get work experience and is now helping underserved communities with employment support. Using AI, we should be able to encourage a more diverse workforce, and hopefully, fewer candidates will have to think of ways of explaining why they don't ski. AI does come with downsides, though. As the flood of generic automated applications comes in, candidates must do more to cut through this noise. That can be in the form of in-person networking or showing more of themselves online. Ultimately, it comes down to the prospective employers knowing who you are as a person and not as an AI in disguise.