HiCounselor, a San Francisco-based digital-first career accelerator platform, has raised $1.8 million in its pre-seed funding round led by Silicon Valley-based early-stage VC Heroic Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Matt Robinson – ARIA Fund, Tread’s CEO Dinesh Godara, and two angel groups, SuperMorpheus and GoldenNivesh.
Founded by Aditya Sharma and Rani Haroune, HiCounselor is a digital-first career accelerator that provides the coaching and resources job seekers and professionals need to land their dream job. It helps students with upskilling and job networking to become skilled software developers, data scientists, and product managers and get into a tech career in top companies, and provides a job search and networking platform for candidates who are currently employed and looking for bigger and better opportunities.
Talking about the education system, problems in the recruitment process, and what HiCounselor is trying to solve, Aditya Sharma, Co-founder & CEO of HiCounselor, said,
“The tech industry is evolving faster than ever before. But the education in universities is still outdated and does not equip students with the required skills to get a job at top tech companies. That’s why more than 50% of graduates remain unemployed or underemployed. On the other side, employers are desperately looking to hire skilled resources, but they struggle to find the right talent. We aim to bridge this massive gap through our personalized learning platform and AI-powered job search and networking tool.”
HiCounselor’s job accelerator program consists of a 4-6 weeks long cohort-based course followed by networking and referrals using their AI-powered networking tool.
During six weeks of the training program, students learn technical skills via 100+ hours of coding during the training program, more than 50 hours of soft skills training, live projects, assessments, and 1:1 mentorship from industry experts from top companies like Facebook and Google. Then, HiCounselor finds interview opportunities for candidates using their strong network of partner companies and their unique AI-powered job search automation tool. This tool automatically identifies new jobs every day and connects them with the hiring manager and recruiters. HiCounselor has a network of over 200+ tech companies.
Understanding that money can be tight for new graduates as well as those seeking a job, HiCounselor makes its job accelerator program completely free until one starts getting paid. There is no upfront payment to attend the HiCounselor program. Students need to pay HiCounselor 9% of their first year’s salary in monthly installments only after landing a job.
