TalentoYa
Transforming the future of hiring across Latin America
The Challenge
Recruitment across Latin America in blue-collar industries is fragmented and inefficient. HR managers face scattered platforms, poor filters, and manual processes that lead to wasted time and hiring success rates as low as 2–5%. On the other side, job seekers struggle with opaque applications, costly document requirements, and little-to-no feedback—turning the process into what many described as a “black hole.” These pain points result in mismatched talent, high turnover, and significant financial losses for businesses.
The Approach
As Lead Entrepreneur in Residence on the venture team, I mentored my client colleagues on the venture building process (Mach49) and helped them uncover strong stakeholder pain, test early stage concepts for feedback, validate a solution, and build a business case to bring it to market. Methods and activities included:
Defining an opportunity statement to serve as the North Star and provide focus/constraints to determine what success looks like
Conducting pain point interviews with job seekers and varying HR roles to understand their pains with either finding and keeping continuous work or accessing the right talent needed for open jobs.
Mapping the end-to-end hiring journey for both employers and workers, identifying friction points and opportunities for intervention.
Creating and testing value propositions (storyboards) and a series of landing page/mobile screen flow prototypes involving guided application flows, virtual hiring events, and curated talent pools.
Developing a comprehensive business plan to pitch to executives, including a business model, operating plan, go-to-market strategy, pilot plan, and formal request for funding.
Conducting sales calls with employers (including multinational brands like McDonald’s) to showcase the MVP solution and achieve buy-in for pilot opportunities.
The Solution
TalentoYa takes the concept of job fairs and transforms recruitment into an AI-driven co-piloted journey, supporting both HR directors and job seekers.
For HR Teams: A structured, efficient hiring process through online hiring events, pre-filtered candidate pools, scheduling tools, and analytics dashboards.
For Job Seekers: Guided profile creation (via WhatsApp), curated job opportunities, application support, and real-time feedback.
Product Features
Planning & Exploration: Event creation tools for HR; guided CV/profile creation for candidates.
Sourcing & Discovery: Real-time job events, curated job openings, and sourcing analytics.
Screening & Application: Automated shortlists, direct communication, and live assessments.
Selection & Engagement: Analytics dashboards, structured feedback, and ongoing candidate engagement.
AI-Powered Learning: Continuous data capture to improve job matching, predict turnover, and optimize strategies
The Impact
TalentoYa’s staged growth and product vision builds towards a full recruitment ecosystem:
Year 1 – Online Hiring Events: faster matches, conversion funnel metrics.
Year 2 – Institutions: partnerships with schools/universities for pre-qualified candidates.
Year 2–3 – Data Locker: verified professional profiles for instant candidate validation and historical reference
Year 4 – Pre-vetted Talent Pool: a living database of job-ready workers, with AI-driven career insights
In the next 6 months alone, TalentoYa aims to:
Positively impact 100 lives (job seekers + HR teams).
Achieve 9 online hiring events with 640+ job seekers in the database.
Track impact through job seeker satisfaction, gender equity, HR satisfaction, and economic improvement
Reflection:
From the Inside Out
TalentoYa demonstrated how human-centered design can transform a deeply broken system. By reframing recruitment as a guided journey—rather than a fragmented transaction—we created a solution that empowers both HR teams and job seekers. For me, this project reinforced the value of combining on-the-ground discovery with bold, scalable business models, and showed how innovation in emerging markets can unlock both social and financial impact.