Announcing Getro.org: An Expert Network of Recruiters Supporting COVID19 Layoffs

💡 Getro.org is a free platform that helps people get introduced directly to hiring managers through a network of expert volunteer recruiters.

While the mainstream news has been predominantly focused on the healthcare crisis of COVID-19, an unemployment crisis has been overtaking Americans, with over 30 million people filing for unemployment.

It’s impossible to predict what the real economic impact will be, but one thing is abundantly clear: it’s time for us to come together as a country to help our friends and families get back on their feet as soon as possible.

When social distancing orders started taking place, my team at Monday.vc began to brainstorm how we could help. We sourced projects from our community, quickly launching two initiatives — Hospitality Link and Gather For — aimed at helping the most vulnerable communities connect to new livelihoods.

Today, we’re launching our third initiative, Getro.org, focused on supporting people who are being laid off within the tech community.

What is Getro.org?

The tech community’s first response to COVID-19 has been a collection of Excel sheets, Airtables, and pop-up projects focused on highlighting people who have been laid off, and the companies who are still making hires.

As the weeks went by and the layoffs continued, we started hearing from hiring managers that these lists were fragmented, hard to search, and the lack of data made it hard to differentiate between candidates. This created noise in their recruiting funnels, making the resources challenging to utilize.

In February, we were approached by Ashley Nowicki. When COVID-19 hit, she had immediately jumped into action, building a list of 800+ people in her personal network who were affected by layoffs; she was also facing the challenge of matching people to companies, so she reached out to us at Monday.vc to see if our team and software could make her process more efficient.

This inspired us to think about what we had to offer this rapidly changing ecosystem; we wanted to make sure that whatever we created would be fundamentally additive. Finally, after weeks of planning, research, and recruiting an incredible team, we’ve landed on something we believe to be the best resource available today, and we’re so excited to finally share Getro.org with you.

Getro.org is a community-driven, pro-bono initiative which aims to help recently laid-off workers find new roles at tech companies.

How is it different from other projects?

• Job matches from experts: our network of expert recruiters introduce people directly to hiring managers at companies we’ve selected.
• No fake jobs; no spam: we curate jobs, companies, and talent through referral partners to make sure everything you see is high quality.
• Always free: it’s free for job seekers, companies, and referral partners.

Getro.org leverages the same software from Monday.vc that hundreds of VC’s use to power their job boards and private talent networks, and exists as a pro-bono project in service of the tech community.

For Companies
When companies are selected by our team, their jobs are automatically added to the job board, they can search the network of Getro.org talent, and our experienced recruiters will begin sending vetted candidates for open roles.

For Job Seekers
Job seekers can sign up to request introductions to companies, become searchable by hiring managers, and get introduced by our team to a list of vetted companies.

For Referral Partners
Referral partners help us curate companies and talent. If you’re managing a community of companies, we’ll add the open jobs from each company for free, and help companies connect to the right people in the Getro.org talent network.

For Advocates
We can’t do this alone. Advocates are individual influencers and connectors who help us spread the word about Getro.org to both talent and companies.

For Recruiters
Recruiters can volunteer to help our team source within the Getro.org Talent Network and make introductions to vetted companies that we’ve selected to work with.

What’s next, and what do we need?

Instead of trying to be the biggest aggregator of talent or jobs, our goal is to get as many people hired as possible.

We’re actively seeking advocates to help us connect with companies and talent, and matchmakers to volunteer a few hours per week, showcasing their recruiting skills and getting people hired into select companies.

If you’d like to get involved, please fill out this quick form to hear from our team.

This is a community-driven project and your support goes a long way in helping us achieve our mission of getting laid-off tech talent back to work.

We’re all in this together! Please share this with your team, investors, communities, and people you know that have been affected by COVID-19 related layoffs.

The project is supported by Upfront Ventures, Owl Ventures, Album VC, Next Ventures, Ground up Ventures, Velocity Group. The core team includes me, Evan Walden (Monday.vc), Melissa Moore (Seneca VC & Lean Startup Co.), Nick Frost (fmr Mattermark), Raul San N.H. (Monday.vc), Rohit Srinivas(Monday.vc), and Sutton Kauss (fmr BlackRock & Conversocial). Our advisors include Ashley Nowicki (Quona Capital), JJ List (Angel investor), and Megan Healy (Upfront).

More about our team here.