SME Member of the Week: MeVitae
MeVitae is the fourth of March's SME Member of the Week. This month, techUK focusing on Women in Tech. Throughout March we are showcasing how SME members are supporting gender diversity within the tech industry.Mevitae use deep-tech and people science to help organisations hire smarter, faster and fairer, without compromising on talent.
How did your company start?
It’s a weird story. My co-founder, Vivek Doraiswamy, wanted to get a job at Microsoft. I was studying neuroscience at Oxford at postgraduate level at the time and he was in computer science. I said ‘do you know how many people want to get into Microsoft? It’s a ridiculous number, especially for software engineers’. So, we thought of other ways he could hack his way into Microsoft to get him a job there. We spent a weekend building Vivek’s CV as an application. We then put it up on the Windows Store to try and grab their attention. The app got rejected, so we edited it to allow anyone to put their CV on the app — a CV in your pocket kind of thing. All of a sudden it became viral and we had 50,000 downloads in a few weeks and we got called into Microsoft which was the entire purpose.
We then started researching the HR world and really how fragmented it was with little diversity in the workplace. The pipeline just looks wrong from every angle. We thought ‘can we disrupt it, because we know how to build tech and we know how to build it fast’ and that was the start of MeVitae. At MeVitae we are committed to being leaders in bias prevention – to help organisations to build a diverse and inclusive workforce by mitigating cognitive and algorithmic bias.
Fast forward a few years and MeVitae now integrates into 20+ of the largest existing HR systems (from Oracle to SmartRecruiters and SAP to Greenhouse), and is shown to increase DE&I in organisation by 30%. MeVitae has grown 5x YOY and is backed by top investors including SFC Capital and Force Over Mass, with NEDs including co-founder of Shazam, Dhiraj Mukherjee.
How does your company contribute to this month's theme?
Diversity is at the core of MeVitae; in the solutions we develop and the team behind it. We pride ourselves in a 50-50 gender split, despite being in an industry where the norm is around half that. For our own hiring, we always run our job descriptions through a job specification analyser to ensure it is not tailored towards a certain gender of applicants. We also make sure we only include the essential skills required for job as we are aware that females are often deterred from applying to roles when they do not meet all the criteria. We used anonymized recruiting and have a diverse panel for the interview.
As for what MeVitae do as an organization; our team develops solutions aimed at debiasing the hiring process with our most popular being our CV anonymization tool. This is capable over 20 different parameters including the candidates name and pronouns, as well as more subtle indicators such as hobbies. When clients advertise that they use our tool, they see a greater number of female applicants, and the solution itself results in a greater percentage of these progressing through the hiring pipeline.
Who's behind your company?
MeVitae was founded by Oxonians Riham Satti, CEO, Keynote speaker (TEDx), D&I TechUK council member and Business Mentor with over 10 years business development and management expertise, and Vivek Doraiswamy, MeVitae’s CTO. Vivek has 14 years’ experience specializing in search and AI algorithms, including leading technical teams having worked with the likes of Microsoft. The academic team has since grown, including Dr Luke Jew, MeVitae’s Research Manager as well as Oxford University lecturer and Astrophysicist. Luke is a renowned expert in applied statistics research with publications in prestigious journals and at MeVitae he works on ensuring our algorithms can be trusted/unbiased. On the tech side, we also have Nathan Lamplough, Algorithm Development Manager, who has expertise in integrating into 20+ HR systems. Other project contributors include data scientist, Bernet Meijer PhD and research associate, Lewis Wood.
On the Business side, we have Emma Bluck who works as our Marketing and Partnership Lead alongside studying a master's degree in Cognitive Neuroscience, and Ellie Young, MeVitae’s Customer Success Engineer with 5 years' experience supporting and managing client relationships.
At MeVitae we seek out disruptive and passionate individuals who are eager to grow. However, we value transparency and humility just as equally, which has enabled us to build a close-knit team of hardworking and ambitious individuals who care greatly about each other's success.
What’s your perspective on the present and the future of this month's theme?
We believe that International Women's Day is an important opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women and to raise awareness of the challenges that they continue to face in the workplace and beyond. While we have seen significant progress towards gender equality in recent decades, there are still many challenges that women face in the workplace and we are committed to addressing these. In addition to developing DE&I solutions, our CEO Riham Satti is a techUK Diversity and Skills and committee member who works with techUK to build the best practices for diversity and inclusion in the tech industry, which is often criticized for its lack of diversity and gender imbalance.
We believe that International Women's Day is an opportunity to renew our commitment to promoting gender equality and to work towards a future where every woman has the opportunity to reach her full potential. We are proud to be part of a movement that is dedicated to creating a more equitable and inclusive world, and we look forward to continuing our work in support of this important cause.
Recent Success
We are also proud to say that we have been working with some of the top organisations around the world, including Hogarth Worldwide and Agilisys. We were also recently awarded as a supplier for the UK Govornments G-Cloud 13 framework, allowing public sector organisations to easily access our solutions.
What does the future look like for your company?
Looking to the future, MeVitae is committed to being leaders in the DE&I space to prevent biases in hiring. We want to collaborate with other organizations that share this commitment, from partners to clients, and work together to drive positive change in the workplace. MeVitae is also focused on becoming a global organization, and we are on track to achieving this goal this year. As we continue to grow, we want to ensure that other companies are making fairer hiring decisions, and we want to be the first name that comes to mind whenever they think of DE&I.
Asks for other members
MeVitae are interested in collaborating with organisations committed to mitigating biases, whether it be using DE&I strategies or partnering to achieve this goal.
More information
https://www.linkedin.com/company/oxiway/
SME Member of the Week: April - Healthtech
For April's SME Member of the Week, we’ll be focusing on healthtech. With health and care systems around the globe facing increasing pressures, the use of digital technology has never been more important. We'll be looking to showcase SMEs who have developed innovative technologies within health and social care, and who are ensuring the UK's health systems are prepared for the future.
techUK – Women in Tech
techUK is marching forward to close the tech gender gap in 2023. Throughout March, coinciding with International Women’s Day (IWD 2023) on 8 March, we are exploring how we embrace equitable workplaces. The UN’s theme for IWD 2023 focuses on Digital for All or DigitALL, and we are proud to support this.
