Information Technology
Suffolk Technologies, DPR Invest in AI-based Hiring Platform Skillit
Startup also has backing from MetaProp and other VCs interested in finding more craft workers for mission critical projects
AI agents underpin Skillit's system, seeking to take over the more tedious tasks in sourcing and apply for craft labor positions.
Skillit, an artificial intelligence-enabled software platform for hiring, screening, and coordinating the onboarding of skilled construction tradeworkers, announced on June 22 a strategic partnership with DPR Construction and Suffolk Technologies, the venture capital arm of Suffolk Construction.
The partnership—supported by equity investments from DPR's venture capital arm WND Ventures and Suffolk Technologies—aims to further develop the skilled labor platform. The contractors did not disclose the dollar value of the investments, but say they will continue to work with Skillit founder and CEO Fraser Patterson and his management team to grow the platform while continuing to use it. The startup has also received investment funding from MetaProp, Building Ventures, Bull Capital and Holt Ventures.
Patterson himself came up through the skilled trades as a journeyman carpenter before running his own general contracting business in New York, where Skillit is also based, and saw the challenge of finding skilled labor firsthand.
"I trying to find labor, in many instances that labor was ultimately available but finding it was difficult because [the construction workforce] has never really been digitized. The skills and preferences of craft workers are they are essentially invisible for all intents and purposes."
Skillit's platform uses an AI agent to do all of the things skilled craft workers generally don't have time to do, such as fill in resume items on their profile, catalog their project experience and respond to job board postings . Word of mouth still plays a strong role in skilled labor hiring, so the platform natively takes voice commands from users.
"The first way in which we're using AI is helping workers to native to their user experience, build out a profile that can help them them discover work," Patterson says. "The next piece, of course, is using AI to dynamically ask the questions that the worker is being asked, which actually comes from the demand on the platform."
Patterson said when he and Skillit's team first started tackling the problems of a skilled labor platform in 2021 and 2022, they quickly realized the problem many startups went into was that they sought to copy the model of LinkedIn or Indeed for skilled craft workers too directly.
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"What we did is we kind of went and met with a bunch of ENR Top Contractors companies and started to build a picture of what's it like to actually try and hire craft, and what you realize is ... most of the hiring is from these top companies," he said. "They're doing all the mission critical work. Energy farms and grid infrastructure upgrades and data centers, hospitals, housing, etc. If you sit with them, you start to realize they're hiring multiple trades at once, across multiple regions at once, across multiple labor types at once, so you've got union in this market and a different union in this market to be signatory to. You've got open shop over here, you've got local workers in this market."
Patterson said he quickly learned the platform needed to capture the nuances of union and open-shop labor, with details on per diems, relocations for traveling craftworkers and other industry-specific qualities.
"We see the future of construction hiring as more connected, more responsive, and grounded in real jobsite needs. Skillit’s platform reflects that direction," says Eric Lamb, a board member at DPR Construction.
Suffolk Ventures said its investment in Skillit is part of an overall strategy to change how all contractors hire in order to create more cost certainty industrywide.
“Skillit is addressing a critical gap in the industry with technology purpose-built for the realities of construction hiring and labor deployment,' says Jit Kee Chin, chief technology officer at Suffolk Construction and managing partner of Suffolk Technologies. "As labor becomes the industry's most constrained resource, the ability to attract and deploy skilled talent will increasingly define the winners and losers in construction."
