A Charleston-based company has been helping students and recent graduates stick their landings in the academic and professional worlds. With the quick changes that have come with the pandemic, Tallo is working to help the workforce keep up.
“We’ve seen so much negativity due to COVID-19, and we aren’t dismissing any of that,” said Tallo CEO and founder Casey Welch. “But, this could be a great opportunity to get people to rethink and be optimistic about these new challenges and things to come.”
Similar to social networks like LinkedIn, Tallo matches users’ profiles to schools and workplaces in search of workers. But Tallo works a bit differently.
New things like remote internships and apprenticeships, and a stronger focus on virtual workspaces are just a few of these new challenges. The generation that Tallo is focused on, Welch said, has grown up with this.
“The tools they are going to be using are things that are innate to them,” he said.
While other organizations and platforms have had to adapt to the shifting tides of the pandemic, Tallo was able to stay its course.
“We didn’t change a thing. We’ve always had a virtual connection platform … In fact, we’ve had some of our highest growth numbers during this time," Welch said.
Tallo got its start in Mount Pleasant eight years ago, and brought on its first couple partners, schools in Goose Creek and Summerville, to help connect students to jobs and opportunities in the area.
Welch still considers the platform a well-kept secret, but he is looking to change that.
“We’ve brought on over 350,000 users this year alone, and where it’s been evolving most is with the groups we’ve been working with,” Welch said. “When we started, we were really focused on high school to college, and we stayed on that while adding the transition from college to adult.”
The platform is also expanding with a web-based app called Ping, geared toward students. Those seeking and offering opportunities fill out a series of questions, and are then matched with a score of 1-100.
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