How People, Tech, and Companies Are Transforming The Job Search
6 Trends for how people and companies are reimagining the job search
Note: If you are a job seeker please let me know if you are using any of these, and if you know someone who is looking for a job, consider sharing this post!
Talk to anyone who’s been through a job search and they’ll probably tell you that it is as much fun as somewhere between a root canal and renewing your driver’s license at the DMV. It’s not something that most people willingly do because they love and are excited to do it, but a necessary evil for existing in the world.
The advent of digital platforms and technologies helped this back at the turn of the decade (2010) I’d go as far as to argue that it actually helped us move on from the narrative that the main way to grow your career was through company loyalty and staying at the same place because people now had the ability to find new jobs with a few clicks or be recognized by recruiters through their linkedin profile. But as anyone who has been through a job search knows, technology has helped the job search process in many ways, it has made it more difficult in many others.
Over the past few weeks I’ve read a number of articles about how even during the Great Resignation/Re-Shuffle with so many people hiring it is still difficult to hear back and find jobs and opportunities. Some people blame the technologies, others blame companies, some blame recruiters, others blame the individuals themselves for not targeting the right roles. Like many things in life, it’s probably somewhere in the middle of all of those.
Over the past decade, I’ve advised and coached hundreds of people through their job and career searches and talked with people on all sides of the job and hiring spectrum, ranging from career education professionals hiring managers, workforce development non profits, labor economists and startup entrepreneurs, all of whom agree that matching talent with existing opportunities is still a process that needs a ton of work and innovation.
I want to highlight six trends that companies and individuals are building solutions to solve for various problems in the hiring process and give some examples of the solutions that are popping up to serve job seekers and employers.
6 Trends For How People and Companies Are Transforming The Job Search
#1: Niche Hiring Markets
#2: Skilling in Public
#3: Fractional Talent Marketplaces
#4: Career Communities
#5: Facilitated Networking
#6: Realigning Hiring Incentives
Problem 1: Job Platforms Have Lots of Postings
Solution: Niche Hiring Markets
The beauty of the job search aggregation platforms is that it makes it easy for recruiters and hiring managers to post jobs to a large number of candidates, and for a large number of candidates to see and apply for jobs very quickly. This is also what’s so challenging about it. When it’s available to one person on the platform it's available to thousands. The average job posting gets about 225 applicants, which is cumbersome for both employers and applicants.
Enter verticalized and niche hiring markets. These individual niche markets are places where people can go to get specific postings (and candidates) that don’t have as much noise and make the candidate funnel smaller. For employers, it helps find those who are truly interested in a specific role/function/type of company, and for candidates, it helps get them in front of companies (and in many cases, hiring managers) a lot faster
Product Marketing Alliance - Started by Richard King and Josie King, PMA aims to be the industry source for Product Marketing Professionals Globally. In addition to providing its members with training, certifications, virtual and live events, they also have a 20,000 person slack channel with a dedicated channel just for hiring and posting jobs. I have personally used this myself to help source candidates and can speak to the ease and efficacy of interacting with people.
Problem 2: The Chicken or The Egg Paradox
Solution: Skilling in Public
It’s hard to gain relevant experience without opportunities and projects
Anyone who is trying to find a new role that isn’t the same role they have now will appreciate (and loathe) the “chicken or the egg” problem. I need skills and experiences to prove I can do the role, but I can’t get the role without proving that I have the experience and skills.
On the other side of the equation, hiring managers and recruiters believe that past performance is a predictor of future success and competency, and often use the candidates previous title/resume/linkedin as a proxy for whether or not that candidate has those skills. This is especially true at companies that have a strong talent brand or are trying to hire an in-demand skillset.
Researchers have shown that the strongest predictor of whether or not someone will actually be successful in a job comes down to their ability to perform the job skills or responsibilities. Employers try to gauge this with all sorts of tests, assignments and projects but those are ultimately only for people who make it into the interview process.
Instead, companies like Forage and Paragon One, are providing opportunities for job seekers to “pre-skill.”
Forage gives early in career talent the ability to take an immersive learning course from top companies to learn about the company and the opportunities it has. It also gives students to demonstrate their competency and proficiency in skills that are needed for those roles, which get them in front of companies, who in turn, get pre-vetted interested applicants at scale.
Paragon One sets up scalable externships with students and companies to give students experiences they can use to gain the real world experience they need to land new roles.
Multiverse, which is a UK Based company that recently closed a new round of funding to expand in the US, matches talent with apprenticeship opportunities to give people hands-on skills that eventually land them to full time employment.
(Source: The Mom Project Website)
Problem 3: Full-Time Employment is Not Friendly to Everyone
Fractional Talent Marketplaces
Not everyone is looking for traditional full-time employment. Sometimes, people want fractional or part-time work because of their own interests or because of their life circumstances. Furthermore, sometimes companies need part-time workers given the needs of workers.
But just because you don’t want full-time work doesn’t mean you aren’t committed to doing exceptional work, and just because your company can’t hire full-time employees doesn’t mean you need to skimp out on top talent.
The Mom Project is a digital talent marketplace that connects talented women with Fortune 500 companies to work on a project or part-time basis. Founded as a means to support working mothers who wanted to work for top companies in a part-time capacity, they recently raised another $80M in August to expand and scale their mission. Since its 2016 founding, over 500,000 professionals and more than 2,000 companies have used The Mom Project, which in addition to matching employers with highly successful talent, also provides community and resources to helping women who are re-entering the workforce.
Continuum is a marketplace for executive talent. Companies (especially fast-growing startups) can tap into Continuum to hire executives on an hourly or project basis as they scale their business. Hiring executives is an important (and potentially costly) decision, so working on a project or part-time basis is a great opportunity for startups and scaleups to try on someone for size. Additionally, many executives at that level do enjoy the ability to work on a portfolio of projects, or are at a stage in their life where they prefer to set a certain amount of hours towards work, which is a great way to get access to high-caliber talent without the trappings of full-time employment.
Problem 4: Job Searching is a Lonely Process
An example of an online event for the Product Buds Community
Solution: Online Career Communities Promote Collaboration, Relationships, and Support in the search
One of the biggest challenges I saw with job seekers is that the job search can be an incredibly lonely process. If you’re working and searching for a new job, chances are you haven’t (and won’t) tell your boss, you probably aren’t talking to your co-workers about it, and while you may have supportive family and friends, sometimes they may not have the context needed to be of much assistance. This is also one of the reasons why the MBA recruiting experience can be such a powerful one - you can literally and blatantly “job search in public” while in business school and get feedback, support, advice from lots of peers who are all doing the same thing at once.
To solve this, there are many Career Communities that are popping up, to make the job search or career search experience less lonely. The best part about this is that these are mostly digital communities, which makes it easy to do even if you are trying to hide it from your boss.
Tech Pod
Joseph Choi started Tech Pod when he was a student at the University of Michigan. Joseph wanted to work in a business role at a tech company and decided to start an online community of peers who were interested in doing the same. Fast forward to a year later, Joseph, now a full-time employee in a non-tech business role at Salesforce, has a community of thousands of job seekers (mostly students) who come to weekly events, read his weekly newsletter (which has lots of job posts) and engage and support each other in the job search.
Product Buds
Grace Yeung started Product Buds, a community for aspiring Product Managers. The Community has a Slack channel where people can learn from each other and network, weekly events to learn more about the product management job or recruiting process, and opportunities to network and practice interviewing to land product manager jobs.
Problem 5: Not Everyone Has Access to a Great Network
Solution: Facilitated Networking
If you’re searching for a job, chances are someone has told you to network. But how do you do it, and how do you find people that actually want to help you? Furthermore, networking is a paradox, in the sense that the people who have the most to gain from it often have the least amount of a network, so how do you do it in a way that is equitable and accessible to those who have been traditionally underserved?
The Equity Network, Founded by HBS Students including Kristina Hu (Check out my interview with her) is a social enterprise trying to solve the equity, networking and mentorship conundrum by connecting helping Black, Latinx and Native American college students and recent grads with 1:1 conversations with advisors in those fields to help them land their dream jobs.
Intros.AI helps facilitate networking between people within online communities. With intros, you enter the information about industries you’re interested in and roles you want to learn about and it matches you with people who are willing to help out.
Problem 6: Mismatched Incentives
Realigning incentives through technology to match talent
People and companies have tried to solve the hiring process for employers and job seekers for years. That’s why headhunters, recruiting agencies, and career coaches exist. While these services and people do work, they don’t work for everyone, and they aren’t always accessible to all. One of the main issues is due to the lack of incentive alignment, especially when it comes to the job seeker.
In order to solve this, a number of solutions (businesses, software, people) have come to market.
More efficient ways to connect talent and employers through influencers
Pallet believes that people hire people, and has built the infrastructure and tooling to turn influencers + creators into personal job boards. As an individual, I can spin up my own personal job board to connect people in my network to opportunities, and can also allow for companies to post jobs on my job board and even charge a fee. Pallet only makes money when the individual makes money, which helps align incentives for all parties involved) Two examples of this come from Lenny and Christina, two thought leaders in their respective fields who have turned to pallet to create job boards that have scaled significantly.
Income Share Agreements - Aligned Incentives for Job Seekers
Career Coaching is a valuable resource, especially if you are unfamiliar with the job and career search. However, it can be hard to find a career coach that fits your needs and oftentimes people are concerned with paying for something like this. Enter the Income Share Agreement which realigns incentives in the job search. Instead of paying for the career coach up front, the career coach gets paid only after you secure a job.
Jonathan Javier and Jerry Lee are modeling this approach through their Wonsulting Career Coaching Company. Under this model, their job seekers get career coaching access through their group coaching program, but only pay after they land a new job (and thus secure full-time employment)
Individual Job Boards
Nick deWilde started his Jungle Gym Talent Collective. In this model, he works with High-growth companies to identify their needs, and then recruits job seekers to build his talent database. If a company wants to talk to a candidate, Nick reaches out to the candidate and asks if the candidate wants to connect further, and then they are off to the races.
Conclusion
I’d love to hear what you think about these problems and if you have tried any of these solutions. Furthermore, if these are in fact problems, I guess these can also be summarized into some trends in the hiring process:
Hiring is going niche
More ways to showcase skills + experiences
New Avenues and Ways to Work Outside of Full-Time Employment
Career Searching Becomes a Team Sport
Networking becomes more efficient and equitable
Realigning Talent Agent Incentives to help Job Seekers
Note: if you’re building something in this space, please reach out