A networking platform explains how it brings employers and job-seekers together, the refugees, at the 2024 World Economic Forum
Refugees face numerous challenges in their new countries, and the lack of connections and unfamiliarity with the culture can make it hard for them to find employment and earn a decent living for themselves and their families.
To help refugees move forward in life and not just in location, the social networking platform Cosmopolis uses AI and relational data to help refugees seeking help find employment and connect them with compassionate and generous helpers. By asking all candidates who are looking for help or for a job to do a six-minute psychosocial assessment, Cosmopolis collects millions of data points about the refugee, who sometimes brings very little information to the table that can be verified.
“The psychosocial assessments and their results help people remember who they are and what value they hold inside. Even if they’ve got nothing else to give, they can hold on to themselves and their inner wealth. We help them portray this inner wealth in ways that are appealing for employers and helpers,” says Paula Schwarz, CEO of Cosmopolis.
Cosmopolis is registered as a for-profit company in Delaware and takes on full legal responsibility for a test hire of a refugee by a company.
For one month, an employer pays a $600 fee to Cosmopolis and gets to know the candidate better for one month through the Cosmo Relationship Manager, without taking on any legal liability. After this trial period, the company can decide whether to hire the candidate permanently. If this happens, Cosmopolis will receive 10% of the employee’s salary and will help them complete their legal paperwork.
Cosmopolis’ investors are as global as their ambition: Tirto Adji, a Silicon Valley-based investor with 10 unicorns in his portfolio, Siham Bloch, a powerful Sudanese investor with strong relationships with the United Nations, as well as Antoine Ohanessian, Adi Divgi, and others. The president of Rwanda has also invested in the payment module of Cosmopolis, led by Davis Nteziryayo.
Cosmopolis is leveraging its connections with different stakeholders in the migration sector and beyond. The team works directly with coordinators inside refugee camps to find candidates for roles such as technology testing for large companies, survey data collection, waste management, babysitting, and several others. Cosmopolis uses sustainability-focused AI platform Improvability AI to show the companies it works with how their actions are contributing to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Companies that hire with Cosmopolis can be issued Carbon Credits through its partner, Clear CO2. With carbon credits soon becoming mandatory for companies in Europe, this is an especially appealing option for employers.
At the World Economic Forum in 2024, Cosmopolis flew in a delegation from Rwanda, Nigeria, and Burundi to demonstrate how companies can hire refugees directly out of refugee camps without bringing them to Europe or other places, and how Cosmopolis can take all legal liability for the trial period. The Cosmopolis team presented their psychosocial assessments and their scientific work at four stages of the World Economic Forum this year, together with partners such as UNHCR, the World Food Program, and Ahura AI.
Cosmopolis’ psychosocial assessment team brings over 50 years of combined experience to the table and has produced outstanding matches. It believes that skills are secondary and learnable, and what matters most is the candidate’s mindset.
Together with Ahura AI, its CEO Bryan Talebi, and other partners, Cosmopolis co-hosted the Responsible Innovation Awards, to find and implement new technology that can help analyze even more attributes in a person that are useful to know for a hire.
Cosmopolis works with the United Nations to validate information and determine if a person is underage, uses fake information, or is a risk in any other way that will exclude them from being hired.
According to Schwarz, Cosmopolis’s entry shows the size of the market around refugee support, estimated at around a trillion dollars, and how much innovation is needed. Cosmopolis and the Corporate Partnerships Department of UNHCR made plans at the World Economic Forum to engage with many more companies in Latin America and the United States. Employers looking to work with Cosmopolis can hand in an opportunity on their website or through email at talent@cosmopolis.app.
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