Meet Homeroom — continuous learning in your job, made social.
We’re imagining a world where consistently taking steps forward in your career after your initial learning curve flattens out is, quite frankly, more doable. We truly believe that your procrastination of that online course is not a you problem. Because when your calendar looks like a brick wall and that “shoes off at the end of the day” moment is, well, what it is, prolonged time and energy are tall orders for anything work related and extracurricular.
Yet keeping up with the evolution of your job and staying ahead of technological change has become more important than ever.
Homeroom is on a mission to make extra professional learning fast and something you actually want to fit into your day. We’re building the first professional development platform specifically designed for lightweight, peer-to-peer learning.
The future of getting your next job
Today, proactive learning at work has become critical. Whether you are concerned about the rise of intelligent automation or not, making professional learning a habit is an important step in keeping up.
Most knowledge workers spend at least 1 hour each week on extracurricular learning [1].
Social learning is accelerating. Fast.
Millions of knowledge workers are flocking to social platforms like Twitter and Slack for community driven professional development [2]. They represent the only learning medium that is fast and engaging enough for busy professionals.
But it has a long way to go.
Compared to “classroom quality” learning, social platforms fall short in some obvious areas. None of them are particularly stellar at helping you:
- Remember information long-term
- Cover a topic in both breadth and depth
- Easily determine the credibility of information
- Keep track of past learning
We’re imagining a world where peer-to-peer learning is driven by a tool that gets an A+ on all of these fronts, and still fits into your week of back-to-back meetings.
Weekly topics as your new secret weapon
We believe in the power of small investments over time and active learning with relevant peers. It just so happens that science does too!
That’s why Homeroom is designed for members to engage with one featured topic each week. You and people with your job description from other companies swap approaches, tools, stories and content in a lightweight way on a recurring basis. You can feel good about “keeping up” with as little as five minutes each week.
Over time, the result is a profile that’s 100x richer than a resume.
Our “why”
Yes, we’re passionate about learning. But a lot of what drives us is our potential opportunity to affect the inequity in the job landscape and a belief that for-profit companies can be the biggest forces for good in the world.
The next professional social network has to address the opportunity gap head on.
What if LinkedIn had focused on being for-good as much as for-profit? This was a question that helped us define our early ambitions for Homeroom.
We’re thinking about how over time, we can be a major force for diversity and inclusion by helping 22–25 year olds who are entering the workforce from a disadvantaged position. Here are some of the levers we plan to pull that align our team, product and profits with this mission.
⚡️What’s next?
New communities. In September of 2019, we opened our beta for a group of talented product managers in tech. Our official launch in April will continue to focus on this group through Q2. Three more communities will go live in Q3 with many more to follow.
New team members. We’re looking for an experienced senior engineer (React, Node.js) with a love for full-stack development and doing exceptional work. Get all the details here.
👋 Say “hi” … actually
A lot of companies give lip service to their open door. We mean it. We welcome your ideas, hopes, dreams, inquiries and hellos. You can ping us at hello@teamhomeroom.com. This will take a village friends.
If you’re a product manager or product designer, request an invite through our website.
Want us to prioritize a Homeroom for your job? Tell us about it here.
Our community brings together people who care about continuous learning so we can keep moving forward in our careers.
[1] Bersin by Deloitte: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-research-shows-explosive-growth-corporate-learning-josh-bersin/
[2] Research in Learning Technology: https://journal.alt.ac.uk/index.php/rlt/article/view/2286
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