Digital Career Fairs

The process of finding a job is hard enough. Finding the right job in a company whose values and culture inspires you is even harder. Think of how it works for millions of students and you realize that the process is truly broken – especially for students and young professionals who have less than five years of work experience.In a study by MeritTrac, they found that India produces over 400,000 engineering graduates and 2.3 million other graduates. Studies reveal that only slightly below 15% of the engineering talent pool is industry-ready and around 10% of non-engineering graduate talent pool is suitable for the BPO industry. IT & BPO industries alone forecast a shortfall of half a million people by 2009.The Employer’s ProblemIt is hard to find the right candidate when you have to sift through so many students. The employer’s brand has to have a high share of mind with the right candidate.Most employers have not changed the way they find talent. They will still go to colleges and make presentations about their organization even though all what they are presenting and more is already available on the net. They need to ask how students hear about companies and form opinions.In a survey by the US startup Collegefeed that polled 15,000 Millennials — 60 percent still in college and 40 percent recent graduates, almost 70% of the students said that they hear about interesting employers from friends.The Student’s ProblemThe students know only about the companies like Google and Apple who are in the news. They are well-known brands that frequently appear in the “best places to work” lists. They want companies that employ people like them. Surprisingly, people and culture fit matters to the millennials the most followed closely by career potential and work-life balance.The career fairs are inefficient. They work very well for the handful of companies that every students wants to work for. Even in a Business School, the process is remarkably inefficient. For the top 5 schools, the best students get multiple job offers from multiple employers. This process works only for the top few employers and students.Digital Career FairsSanjeev Agrawal, is the CEO and co-founder of the startup Collegefeed. Before starting Collegefeed, he ran product marketing for Google. This former McKinsey consultant has a BS and and MS from MIT.He has an innovative solution to this problem. “Run Digital Career Fairs”, he suggests. “Imagine having career fairs through the year, if not every day.”The placement process for college students is broken. Employers have to travel on campus, bring the right 2 - 3 people, and put up banners and billboards to attract students. They have a short window of opportunity to evaluate students who show up at the booth.Carnegie Mellon University students recently had a taste of a Digital Career Fair when they recently signed up with Collegefeed. They created a profile that asked not only for their grade sheet but gave them a chance to also put up their digital portfolio. The students also got a chance to state their top three preferred employers.Collegefeed’s site uses an algorithm that will send their resume to whichever company is looking for people with that background and interests. More and more employers, including well known ones like Google, Apple and Tesla have publicly talked about how they look not just for students with top grades, but important cultural attributes like problem solving and the demonstrated ability to build things. The algorithm can do just that. The service is free for students.For a fee, Collegefeed offers employers a chance to sign up and get ongoing "feeds" of relevant students delivered to them over multiple days and even weeks. This is so much more efficient than sifting through hundreds of irrelevant resumes. The idea is to deliver ongoing sets of matching profiles to employers and make lots of connections happen. Whether it is Google or a two person alumni-run startup that wants to hire students, both get an equal shot at attracting talent.Sanjeev says, “When I was a student and needed a network to get an internship or a job, I had none. So the idea was to create a network that students or anyone with less than five years of experience could leverage to find an internship or a job. I would love to bring this to India but I am not sure if there is a business proposition there. In US it costs almost $3000 to hire a college student. It is an 8-10 billion dollar opportunity waiting to be tapped.”Imagine what a disruptive impact this could have in the world’s youngest country.---------First written for my column in The Economic Times on April 11, 2014Join me on Twitter @AbhijitBhaduri