925 (text925.com) is a phone number that you can text for free assistance in your job search. A real human replies immediately and helps you find opportunities that are tailored specifically to your needs. Your assistant continues working with you until you find a job.
Down the road, we plan offer more in-depth job-search assistance to candidates, including reviewing resumes, offering interview coaching, and submitting applications.<p>Why use this instead of...<p>—Job boards: it's overwhelming to search through the morass of listings on public boards. Good opportunities are hard to filter out from garbage, the search engines suck, and the entire process is time-consuming and impersonal. We provide instantaneous, high-quality customer service, are experienced at finding quality listings, and will work with you until you find a job.<p>—Recruiters: most third-party recruiters are employed by a small number of companies and will work to steer you towards those (so they can collect referral bonuses). It's also much more of a pain to work with one, requiring lengthy phone calls and meetings. We provide unbiased service and are always available via text.<p>Traction:
We launched our public beta four weeks ago and have over 300 sign-ups, and have exchanged over 4,000 texts with our job-seeking users. Some of our first batch are progressing through interview processes that we helped setup. We talk to our users every day, by nature of the product, and they love it! (Unprompted customer testimonial: “You guys are so fantastic. I know I speak for thousands when I say THANK YOU”)<p>Team:
I left business school to teach myself iOS development, and have been coding for the last 3 years. My cofounder is a Javascript/full-stack developer. We both have suffered through horrible job searches, and want to help people in our position.<p>Would love to hear your feedback.
How will you be unbiased when you start to monetize this? Are you planning to find a way to be compensated that is independent of whether someone gets a job using your service?
Having dealt with recruiters who simply scraped the web and job boards, I'm curious about how potential positions are discovered, evaluated, and acquired.