Hired: https://hired.com/ "Get Matched with a job you love"
Catered job matching
Hands-off methodology
Relies on titles, salaries, and location
Indeed: https://www.indeed.com/ "search millions of jobs online to find the next step in your career."
Focuses on strong algorithms and speed
Exploratory methodology
Quantity over quality
Focused on massive catalog of opportunities
Connection based methodology
Relentlessly spammy
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What is obvious from digging into the three main competitors that I can identify is that they all focus on matching data points about job title, salary, and location very well. In today's algorithmic world, this feels almost like a 'well duh'; there is are a few gaps that I can observe from this research.
1. No one is focusing on the idea of "Empowerment."
How can we take a candidate and push them to actually LAND a job rather than just find one? Can a service provide professional insights to those who have not yet had professional experience and thusly don't know what to do to prepare for an interview? To set up SEO on their portfolio? What to provide when applying?
2. No one is utilizing the soft, emotional side of candidates to its full potential.
How can a service understand it's patrons on a more emotional, empathetic, and qualitative manner? What if the service could understand the "why" of you want a job? Can this understanding lead to better placement within a new role? Can this lad to better hires by employers?
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Questionnaire:
I sent out 15 questionnaires to people that fit my persona (young, seeking a first-time "real" job, somewhere in a creative field, with minimal industry experience) and asked them the following questions:
- What is your current Job Title?
- Can you briefly describe your role?
- Are you a Full-Time Employee? Contractor/Consultant? Part Time?
- When was the last time you looked for a job?
- How did you search when you were looking? (i.e. Recruiter? Job Site? Personal Connection?)
- How long did you search before finding your job?
- How would you describe the overall experience? Was it fast? Tiring? Time-Consuming?
- What was the best part?
- What was the worst part?
- What could have made it better?
People noted that when applying for jobs they felt anxious like never before, they felt a sense of abandonment when they were forced to toss resumes into a black hole, they felt lost when they actually got an interview and didn't know how to properly prepare, they felt beaten down, depressed, and finished after receiving rejection letters; things did not seem to be perfect in my participants eyes.
How would you describe the overall experience?
“Time-consuming and stressful”
“Exhausting and redundant”
“It felt like throwing darts into a dark room”
“I felt so burnt out by the time it was done”
What could have made it better?
“A better filtering system to match what employers are looking for and what job hunters are interested in”
“Status updates on the application”
“Mental health/moral check-ins”
“Reviews from industry professionals”
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SME Sitdown:
I had a great conversation with Dana Ellison (Sr. Recruiter at Creative Circle) where we discussed at length the issues involved in getting people (and businesses!) the roles they need. We came away with the following notes.
- It’s about the 2/3
- how do you level up
- First job coach
- Mentor
- Scribe
- Recruiter
- Learns my traits by understanding what I’m good at, what I like to do, what I don’t like, what I’ve done, etc.
- Idea: Example roles to build personality data
- Synthesizes my information and determines roles that fit my personality data and that of similar applicants
- Presents roles that match with certain levels of my criteria, prioritizes them based on match %
- Idea: Correlation matches, I.e. we see people with builds like yours that land roles like this, is that something you’d be interested in?
- Offers me constructive criticism to help me become better suited for the roles I want.
- Idea: Best practices, pro-tips, resume help, online resources
- Assists me in submitting an “as good as possible” application
- Idea: offers insights into timelines, appropriate language, cover letter, information from #4 above, etc.
- Schedules activities by synching availability data between me and the business
- Prepares me for upcoming events (interviews, portfolio reviews, resume reviews, phone screens, etc.)
- Idea: Interview checklists, Timely notifications, etc.
- Tracks my progress and provides helpful status updates
- Idea: Tips on when it is respectful to reach out
- Possibly automated?
- Congratulates me on my accomplishments when I get an offer
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DME Sitdown:
I also had a very in-depth conversation with Yuriy Zaremba (Sr. UX Designer at Amazon) regarding some of the progress I have been making on this project. He shed light on everything from how to display the reasoning behind the product over its features, how to keep track of your true audience, and how to properly construct the UI of the product to get the maximum effect.
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