The art of the job hunt. It's a tricky one—high stakes, scary, and often hemmed in by regimented processes (as anyone who has had to prepare an application for electronic readers seeking key words well knows).
Hoping to help ease things for both employers and employees:
Deskribed, a Toronto startup that wants to help match up job seekers with positions that are not just okay, but the perfect fit.
The current problem: many of our needs often aren't covered in the standard job-hunting process. For an increasing number of workers, quality of life issues are becoming at least as important as considerations like salary or status—and those circumstances, which make a job fit well or poorly into our lives, are often inadequately captured, if at all, in standard job descriptions or hiring processes.
Deskribed co-founder Karim Gillani first came up with the idea a couple of years ago, when he was living in San Francisco and working at RIM.
"I was in this situation where my job was great but…I was looking for a change and i thought to myself that rather than going out to look for jobs…wouldn't it be great if i could just set up exactly what i want for myself, and get opportunities sent to me—
real opportunities that were good for me."
And so he decided to build just that.
Deskribed's goal, he says, is to serve as a "time saver for the type of people who have a job but are dissatisfied in some way and are looking for a better way to find their next opportunity."
Those job seekers set up profiles that include "things like your commute time, your role seniority, the work culture—things that don't often come out in a typical job application…we decided to put those things that really affect your quality of life in up front."
And those would-be employees are being matched up with companies that understand the importance of those values. Deskribed's ideal employers are "high growth early startups, typically companies that have recently raised a round of funding and looking to hire"—and who understand that the key to attracting talent isn't as straightforward as it used to be.
Deskribed is currently very focused—both on Toronto, and on the technology sector. Over time they anticipate growing geographically (particularly to other cities with high concentrations of tech jobs) and then expanding into other industries. In the meantime, they are doing some hiring themselves: the startup currently has five staff, and is looking to add some front end developers to their own employee pool.
Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Karim Gillani, co-founder, Deskribed
Photo: Jason Hoffman