Online Subprime Lender Banks on Diverse Hiring

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ZestFinance is trying to increase its employee diversity and the company wants the world to know why.

“You can do this for moral or political correctness, but for us diversity matters because you get more perspective,” said ZestFinance Chief People Officer Sonya Merrill. “With more perspective you get better decisions, which yield better business results.”

The Hollywood firm is a rapidly growing online subprime lender that uses sophisticated computer algorithms to assess borrower risk. As such, the company said it is continually recruiting employees with technical skills. Yet, it has also made its mission to recruit candidates in underrepresented categories such as women, minorities, veterans and people with disabilities.

As part of the effort to recruit more women, ZestFinance announced a family-leave policy last month, which includes six months of paid time off for primary caregivers, with an option to work part time for six additional months with full benefits, as well as three months of paid time off for new secondary caregivers.

Women represent 42 percent of ZestFinance’s 100 employees, but the company is aiming to push that number to 50 percent by the end of the year.

“It’s hard enough to find that amazing female engineer in the first place,” said Merrill. “That is where our family-leave policy can be very helpful.”

While many businesses balk at the cost of paid family leave, Merrill said it makes good financial sense.

“The business case should not be around, Oh, my gosh, how much is it going to cost to have this benefit? What companies should ask is: How much is it going to cost us to not have this benefit?” she said. “Recruiting, training and retaining is way more expensive than offering great benefits up front. A lot of companies are shortsighted in how they look at it.”

Still, ZestFinance also acknowledges increasing female representation will be difficult.

“There are fewer female candidates for technical roles,” said Merrill. “Dramatically fewer.”

So instead of looking for women candidates with specific technical skills, such as knowledge of the programming language Ruby, the company looks for candidates with skills in closely related programming languages and the aptitude to learn.

“We’ll teach them Ruby and we’ll expect that they’ll have a three- to four-month learning curve,” said Merrill. “It requires you to change your forecasting and hiring practices a little bit.”

Individuals who are open to developing new skills also fit into ZestFinance’s culture, she said.

“At the end of the day women and diversity candidates want the same things as everyone else,” she said. “They want the opportunity to do interesting and challenging work, where they feel valued and appreciated.”

Jukin Inks HuffPo Deal

Online video firm Jukin Media of Culver City has signed a deal to supply licensed user-generated videos to New York’s Huffington Post.

The company will provide videos for all 15 international editions of the news website. Jukin will also work with HuffPo editors to provide user information and story notes, including first-hand accounts from the owners and stars of the videos.

Jukin, headed by founder and Chief Executive Jonathan Skogmo, scans websites such as YouTube looking for potential hits it can license. The company’s software alerts its broadcast partners about what new content might be a good fit for their shows so that the producers don’t have to do research on their own. The company has long licensed popular viral clips for television, such as a video of a car crashing on an icy road, a valet driver taking a Ferrari for a joy ride and a flight attendant helping a woman give birth midflight.

“Huffington Post covers a lot of topics and luckily we curate content across dozens of categories from viral videos to kids, pets, weather, world events, etc., so we’re uniquely positioned to service their team,” said Chief Growth Officer Cameron Saless. “Because this deal is also global in nature we can expect to also cater our acquisitions to local markets with feedback from their editorial teams.”

Using other people’s content to generate traffic has been a hit strategy for other viral media-focused companies, such as BuzzFeed of New York. The deal with Jukin is part of Huffington Post’s effort to scale back live video, partly in favor of lower-cost licensed content that plays well on social media.

Rebooting

Tongal of Santa Monica, a crowdsourced content studio that connects independent filmmakers with brands, has named Amanda Malko chief marketing officer. Malko previously was chief marketing officer at New York marketing agency 360i. … Software services company Akana Inc. of Brentwood has named Mark Tapling chief executive. Tapling was previously chief executive of PacketVideo, a San Diego company that sells multimedia software to wireless operators.

Staff reporter Garrett Reim can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 232.

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