Job Portal: How We Adapted to Support Unemployed Workers | NBC News

As unemployment levels began to surge and industries suffered staggering revenue losses, millions of Americans lost their jobs and were looking for resources and support to help them get back to work.

So to reimagine a better future for all workers, we first had to reimagine our business model.

When COVID-19 hit, 1Huddle didn’t sit back and wait for change to happen. We got to work designing hundreds of quick-burst games created to help job seekers learn new skills and find suitable job openings.

NBC News reporter Natalie Pasquarella reported on our work in the TV news segment “Open For Business: Game, Set, Job Match at NJ Gaming Company.” In case you missed it, here is a recap of the story’s top highlights:

1Huddle transforms outdated training manuals, modules, and videos most companies use into interactive games that employees can play on the go.

But when the pandemic started, we adapted to help our clients who were directly impacted by COVID-19. We called every one of our customers and said, “if you’re still leaning into your people, we’re here for you. Don’t worry about how many users you have. Don’t worry about billing. Just go.”

Then, we turned ourselves inside out.

Rather than creating games for those who were already employed, we began creating games for the two million Americans who are looking for work. The idea was to give job seekers the ability to upskill and find current job openings that suit their interests, experience, and skills.

“We built over 500 games on all of the top jobs that are out there today,” Sam Caucci  told NBC News. “Wholefoods, Amazon, all the brands that are hiring. Every day, there’s a different challenge related to a job skill or a job topic. You might play a game today on how to use Zoom. Tomorrow, you might play a game on contact tracer training.”

We started off by opening our platform to residents in our company’s hometown of Newark. After looking at Governor Murphy’s job portal, we built games on all 700 of the companies hiring in New Jersey. From there, we expanded to create more games on multinational companies hiring all across the country. We then created a new on-demand Game Shop to democratize game access to all workers so that throughout the pandemic and beyond, workers looking to upskill, reskill, and find a job have boundless resources at their fingertips to help them do it.

If this recap left you wanting to find out more about how 1Huddle is raising up all workers, you can watch the full NBC News interview and head over to our newsroom to keep up with the top stories, trends, and articles happening at 1Huddle.