Sam Altman-Backed Mentra Aims To Match Neurodivergent Jobseekers With Ideal Jobs

Due to confidence issues and difficulties interviewing, neurodivergent individuals often face higher unemployment rates than their non-neurodivergent counterparts. However, they may possess specialized skills that can enhance team productivity by up to 30% in suitable work settings. A startup backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman aims to help these job seekers find suitable employment opportunities, leveraging technology and assessments to match individuals with roles that best align with their abilities and skills. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from TechCrunch: Enter Mentra. The Charlotte, N.C.-based startup, whose three co-founders are all autistic is building what it describes as an AI-powered "neuroinclusive employment network." Specifically, its tech platform leverages artificial intelligence to help large enterprises hire employees with cognitive differences such as autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyslexia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The startup's unique premise caught the early attention of OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, who first invested in the company with a $1 million pre-seed investment in February 2022 through his venture firm, Hydrazine Capital. Mentra also won an AI for accessibility grant from Microsoft. Shine Capital led its $3.5 million seed round this year, which also included participation from Altman's fund, Verissimo, Full Circle, Charlotte Fund, as well as angel investors including David Apple and Dawn Dobras.

What sets Mentra apart is its approach to job fit, maintains Mentra co-founder and CEO Jhillika Kumar. The startup goes beyond keywords in resumes to match employers with talent, she said, considering factors around a person's neurotype, aptitude, environmental sensitivities. To date, its one-year retention rate has remained at an impressive 97.5%. [...] One way Mentra uses AI is to parse through job descriptions to make sure they are cognitively accessible and broken down in a consistent format that is not exclusionary. "Then we are able to use an algorithm to go through the jobseekers on our platform to identify who's the best fit based on mostly neuro type," Kumar told TechCrunch. "One person might be extremely good at hyper focusing, very detail-oriented, very process-oriented or very strategic, and you have specific skills that map to their strengths in the role." Over 70% of the data Mentra collects is not collected by an Indeed or a traditional job-finding platform. It uses that holistic data to make the match between the job and the individual.

The startup's current revenue model is free for neurodivergent jobseekers, and it charges an annual subscription for enterprise companies to access the platform. It is also building out a neuroinclusion marketplace for service providers such as consultancies and training firms to provide hands-on services to companies that accompany Mentra's core platform. "In the future, we plan to have a similar marketplace available for neurodivergents to access tailored services as well throughout the life of their career such as bootcamps and job coaches," Kumar added.

Re: So?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

And when does this become the next WOKE crusade?

Prolly in the next week or two, depending on the severity of the GOP's next embarassment.

Re: So?

[Luke has no name]

Don't insult autists.

do they look for job descriptions with BS?

[Joe_Dragon]

do they look for job descriptions with BS?
like 5 years in software X that was only out for 2 years?
roles that read like the work of 2-3 people?
JR roles that are really mid level or higher?
Job that say great fit for an new graduate but have skills that are very unlikely to be found with most graduates.
Job that want an masters but pay very low.

Re:

[quonset]

like 5 years in software X that was only out for 2 years?

You mean like this [imgur.com]?

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

like 5 years in software X that was only out for 2 years?

I've listened to a hundred times as many people complain about this than I've seen actual ads that ask for it, and those ads were twenty years ago.

Re:

[Miamicanes]

Well, it was absolutely pervasive about 25 years ago back when C# and dotNet appeared. HR drones blindly slapped "5+ years experience" on job descriptions looking for people with experience in C# and dotNet at a point when they had LITERALLY been first released to the public by Microsoft less than 2 or 3 years earlier.

The same was just as pervasive in the early days of Java, when few Sun employees could have actually met a "5+ years experience" with Java requirement, let alone anyone who didn't work for Sun

Re:

[null etc.]

Well, it was absolutely pervasive about 25 years ago back when C# and dotNet appeared.

Thank you for making me feel old.

Neurodivergent

[Midnight_Falcon]

Is this the new term for an employee who ranges from "Mumbles often demanding the return of his red swingline stapler" and "is good at one small area but otherwise so freaking annoying and toxic to work with, consumes more of HRs time than they bring value to the company.". Not everyone who is neurodivergent is harmless, many of them have a real jerk streak that makes the rest of us wary.

Re:

[blackomegax]

You must not work in IT then. 90% of IT workers are on the spectrum and have little to no people skills, but are amazing technical workers who keep the world turning by keeping the networks running.

Re: Neurodivergent

[Midnight_Falcon]

Maybe 20 years ago, but today it's far less than that. Much more of them in software development. A lot of the backend roles like DBA are being replaced by cloud and automation, and back office IT is becoming DevOps centric blurring the line with software dev. Companies want IT workers who can be personable with the user base. I've hired hundreds in IT and can tell you in every interview we were looking for being personable just as much as tech skills -- for junior IT positions like help desk, we're look

Re:

[blackomegax]

Requiring social skills from your IT workers violates the ADA protections for neurodivergent people as a lack of social skills is a trait of autism, and autism makes people better IT workers.

Re:

[awwshit]

That is 90% bullshit.

Re: Neurodivergent

[WereCatf]

It's got nothing to do with being neurodivergent it neurotypical; some people just are massive assholes. Anyone who attempts to paint one group or the other as somehow generally better in this area is just pushing an agenda.

Re: Neurodivergent

[Luke has no name]

I know incredibly social, typical people who are intelligent pieces of shit human beings.

And geeky anxious people who have trouble focusing, get nervous presenting, and can't communicate via certain channels well but are very nice and talented.

So, to be blunt, quit trying to sound insightful when you're simply being judgemental and naive.

Re:

[Midnight_Falcon]

I've had to sit through too many meetings with HR and fire far too many people in awkward situations for it to be naive. Sure, there's harmless people you can insert in various roles that won't have to present or do a lot of social interaction. For each one of those, there's someone that can't present but complains they want an opportunity to do so, gets it, chokes, runs off and cries and causes an HR incident. It's a very mixed bag and unfortunately what I've seen is that it's largely one that bites you

Re:

[null etc.]

Thank you for promoting a negative stereotype that offers no real value of anything to the world.

Re: Neurodivergent

[Midnight_Falcon]

Value: Hiring super-weird people that have serious social issues and are hard to work with, despite propaganda otherwise, is usually not good for your company. There's plenty of eccentric people in tech, but once it crosses a certain line it gets in the way of having a productive team and is punishing for coworkers who have to deal with constant issues.

Hydrazine Capital

[dsgrntlxmply]

Next venture: Ricin Capital. Good grief, why that name?

Autistic self advocate here

[Peterus7]

Bit of context-

I've worked in tech, both in a startup and fortune 500 doing software engineering. I am also an autistic self advocate who works as one of the directors for an autism clinic facilitating autistic community building and socialization. I've also done a lot of work on helping autistics into adulthood, and all the challenges there. There's kind of two job pathways I see, at least in the Seattle area, where I live- autistics who are good at IT end up doing very well working for Microsoft or Amazon, and then those who aren't good with tech really end up struggling, often times ending up bouncing from job to job.

So what that tells me right off the bat is that there's a bit of selection bias. Autistics tend to have a lot of aptitudes that set them up for success in tech jobs, and companies that are using Mentra to hire people are already familiar with how to accommodate autistics. Not that this is a bad thing, but I think it'd be better to look at how this works with non-IT jobs.

Also, some of the comments on this are ableist af. Autistics built IT. We're all over slashdot. Don't be dicks.