Why not? The US online job search market is huge and was worth about $2.4 B in 2007. There are approximately 17 million users who visit various career websites each month. There are approximately 149 million people in the US workforce. Every year approximately 50 million people change their jobs. That means one-third of the entire workforce turns over each year because of new opportunities. The average American worker has had nine jobs by the time he or she is 34 years old because of new opportunities. However, if you look at the top career sites, they haven’t changed much from 10 years ago when I first used those tools. The same old process: employers post jobs and job seekers post their resumes, then employers search resumes and job seekers research positions and submit resume and then wait for an interview. Recruiting is still a very time consuming and sometimes very painful process.
Some companies have been trying to solve the problem from the employers end by attempting to make the process easier and less painful for employers. However, very few resources have been spent on the job-seekers side.
There are several problems for job seekers: 1) Going through multiple sets of interviews answering essentially the same most commonly asked questions. 2) No place to get help before the interview (the basic info of the process and how you compare with other candidates). 3) No feedback after interview (What type of person got the job? Why didn’t I get it? What qualifications did I lack? In what area do I need to improve? etc). 4) No place to share comments/experiences. 5) No central place to manage your career or track multiple career websites.
uCareer is designed to solve these problems and utilize some very popular web2.0 features and applications to make the job searching process less time consuming and less painful for job seekers. We will be the first site using video as a primary communications vehicle for job seekers and employers to communicate with each other. We will leverage our social network platform to help better organize the job search process. There are approximately 16 million college students in the U.S. and about 4 million of them graduate each year. Our main target audience is between 18 to 35 years of age with a special focus on college students and recent graduates. They are tech savvy and willing to challenge the status quo.
