Edtech company Entity Academy wants to close the wage gap through AI-powered interview training

What am I going to do with my life? 

Hannah Dobrogosz, a junior staff writer for BuzzFeed, asked herself that very question back in 2019 when she was a junior at Elon University. Searching for guidance, she discovered Entity Academy, an organization that helps women of any age and job experience hone the skills they need to succeed in their careers through education, coaching and mentorship.

“Entity helped me figure out what I wanted to do, helped me polish my resume, gave me a more robust portfolio, and definitely gave me more confidence,” Dobrogosz says. “There was nothing holding me back from applying to a company as big as BuzzFeed. Entity was the building block for me.”

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Since 2016, Entity Academy has coached and educated over 600 women and is now offering its services online, with its eye toward reaching 1,000 graduates by the end of this year. The company is expanding its capabilities with the recent acquisition of SpeakPulse, an interview preparation technology that helps job seekers speak more clearly and eloquently, and practice for interviews.

This acquisition will help Entity enhance its mission of helping women find and excel in meaningful careers while making efforts to close the wage gap through compensation negotiation coaching, says Jennifer Schwab, CEO of Entity.

“I was motivated to really invest in the placement portion of our programs,” she says. “Now that interviews are remote, we found that a blind spot we needed to address was getting women comfortable with those types of interviews.”

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By partnering with SpeakPulse, Entity students will have access to randomized interview questions that will let students record and playback 30 to 60-second soundbites, allowing them to analyze their skills and responses. The AI also scores and ranks speech patterns and gives feedback on any redundancy, stutters, or stumbles, as well as the use of filler words, the quality of their articulation and pronunciation, and speech rates.

Students will be able to share this information with an Entity career coach during one-on-one meetings for more personalized interview prep. Eighty-five percent of SpeakPulse users have shown increased confidence when interviewing because of this training and coaching, according to data from the company.

“This technology allows us to scale a very important part of our placement strategy, which is preparing women for an interview,” Schwab says. “Being able to listen to and watch those videos, and have coaches who work with students before we send them out to employers has been critical.”

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While Dobrogosz graduated before the SpeakPulse program was incorporated, the skills she learned through Entity helped set her up for success every day.

“Entity is a place where you're going to feel empowered no matter what you do, and you're going to want to bring your best self to the table every day because the people around you give you that confidence and drive,” she says. “The professional world can be scary and they do what it takes to get their students the help and education that they need.”