Diego Montemayor and Corina Hierro, founders of Chamba join Cheddar News to discuss how their app is helping Hispanic job seekers find careers. 

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Chamba App Connects Restaurants with Hispanic Job Seekers

this segment brought to you by Jpmorgan Chase celebrating Hispanic heritage month and our communities every single day and one organization aiming to help as many people as possible find jobs all with a touch of a finger is chamba. It's a new app that serves as a resource for the Latin X community, looking at navigate the job market in the food and beverage industry. So joining us now to talk all about it is Diego Montemayor and Corinna Yarrow founders over at chamba. Great to have both of you here with me. This is such a great idea, Diego. What sparked the idea to create this app and what was really missing in this space here. Hi, good morning, Great questions. So the inspiration here to create chamba was to connect uh, to employers and digitize one of the largest workforces in the United States, which is the Latin X community. Our latino community are latino workforce and to make jobs more accessible for, for our community through technology. Especially right now when everybody is struggling to find amazing talent. Yeah. So Karina, let's go through this technology, walk us through what, how you guys created this, specifically the Ai and the Ciampa Navigator here. Yeah, so we began with a landing page and then we went forward to creating the actual app and now we do have websites for both the employers and about to launch the job seeker website. So when an employer post their vacancy their job through our website. It is immediately available on the app site for all of the job seekers to see and apply. Okay, so Diego, let's talk about the unique challenges job seekers in the hispanic community facing this job market, what are they? Accessibility, that's the main issue, connectivity, there's a lack of it uh there are other job platforms in the market but none that specifically catered to this very hard to reach community which is the latino community if we made jobs more accessible easier to apply to and auto technology. Okay, so Karina, what's been the response so far from clients and users from this? I think I would assume that this response has been amazing to something like this. It has been truly amazing and we have had a lot of support from our community and of course we get the comments from our, from our clients saying thank you so much for this kind of platform because we needed it for the longest time and they're able to hire people fast and that's exactly what they needed and on the job seeker side, same thing, they're able to connect to jobs quickly and in their language. Yeah, and that that obviously is key to that also Diego, what's sort of interesting in all of this is really since the pandemic, a lot of restaurants have claimed to be seeing labor shortages, do you feel like that's true. How do you sort of feel like your company is connecting those dots here, restaurants, expectation for permanent closure on their current conditions is more than 54%. Right, So it's more than half within a year a year. And one of the biggest issues that they have is not only uh prices of everything going up but labor shortage, eight out of 10 restaurants report struggling to hire enough staff right now and why not help an industry that is truly struggling with this with, with finding talent right? And here in chamba we view this problem not as a labor shortage problem but as a connectivity problem and that's why we're really good at solving uh this problem because we can connect restaurants to the latino workforce and get them hired within within seven days. Karina, let's talk about if there were any challenges for you guys when you were trying to get this company off the ground, did you sort of go through any hurdles that we see a lot of minority owned and founded businesses go through? Yeah, definitely. I think uh, as first time founders of course you have to find your way and yeah, in the VC world you're not going to see a lot of people that look like you as being a, being a Latina being a minority. But I do want to highlight the fact that the resources are there and we have to really go out and get them and google is free. Uh, making connections is really, really important very early on and what tips by the way Corina do you have for any future entrepreneurs that are watching this interview? Especially entrepreneurs of color, especially when it comes to getting that VC money. I think it's really important to highlight what makes you different um and always be driven by your mission. That's what's gonna wake you up from from bed every day because sometimes it will get hard, you will get a lot of knows, but my best advice is just keep going and you know every no, you're closer to that. Yes, absolutely. You only need one. Yes, that's so true. Diego let's talk the future. What's future expansion and growth look like for you guys in the next year or so? Absolutely. So by the end of the year we're expected to see half a million users in the platform. That's a huge workforce available uh for restaurants and just to expand on the jobs that that we offer in the platform to bring more industries and to continue to simplify the application processes for our job seekers and to make the life easier of all these employers that are in need of good talent. Absolutely, congratulations, both of you guys on the success of this. This is just great news, Diego Montemayor and Karina Yarrow founders over at chamba and Jpmorgan Chase is committed to supporting Hispanic and latino communities and advancing economic growth for all visit jpmorgan Chase dot com slash A H L. To learn more