PeduL

PeduL is a Newark, New Jersey company that operates a distribution layer for talent acquisition. Its current product helps employers place open roles in social feeds, communities and other online contexts through creators, employees and other trusted social voices, rather than relying only on job boards and static career sites. The company positions the service as complementary to an employer's applicant tracking system: it does not replace the ATS, but routes candidate interest discovered through social distribution into the employer's existing hiring workflow.

The workflow described by the company has five steps: aligning on hiring goals, audience behavior, geography and qualifications; matching brands with creators, employees or social voices whose audiences map to the target talent pool; launching content in the channels where candidates already spend attention; converting interest into defined next steps inside the employer's process; and measuring performance to refine messaging, targeting and future distribution. The platform serves three constituencies — employers seeking candidates, candidates looking for roles with more context and a faster path to apply, and creators who partner with brands to surface opportunities to their audiences.

Earlier in its history the company operated as a scholarship-centered diversity recruiting marketplace. As described in 2020 and 2021 coverage, PeduL was a one-stop scholarship application for minority college students that let corporations use scholarships and fellowships as a recruiting channel for internships and entry-level roles, narrowing applicant pools to closely matched candidates using criteria beyond GPA and skills. A candidate-facing sign-up application at app.pedul.com continues to collect applicant details such as name, email, LinkedIn profile, pronouns and race.

Founding story

Co-founders Kayla Michèle and Chisa Egbelu, former Rutgers University students, started PeduL in 2016 to give students from underrepresented communities access to academic and professional opportunities, building a universal scholarship application that connected those students to corporate sponsors.

Business model

PeduL sells to employers, which pay for distribution of their open roles across creator and employee-led social channels; creators partner with the company to promote brands' opportunities to their audiences, and candidates join the network free. In its earlier scholarship-marketplace form, corporations funded scholarship programs through PeduL and used the resulting applicant pool as a recruiting source.

Employer-paid distribution of job openings through creator and employee channels; historically, corporate sponsorship of scholarship and fellowship programs used as a recruiting pipeline.

Traction

As of 2020 the company said the #StepUp20 campaign would give brands access to a talent network of 5 million students, and it had received a $10,000 donation from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. By October 2021 it had raised about $700,000 outside the Google grant, with investors including IDT Ventures, Newark Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Preface Ventures and angels, and was in the middle of another fundraising round. The current site cites customer testimonial support from a former Unilever people-experience leader and advertises unspecified improvements in cost per applicant, engagement, interview rates and time to fill.

Latest developments

The company now markets itself as a distribution platform for modern talent acquisition built around creators and employee voices, and promotes an appearance at Forbes Summit 2026.