Exploring new ways to find jobs Week 7&8
Another pivot, this time a decided one, I am seeing some light at the end of the tunnel!
A friend asked me: “What does a founder associate do? Is he like a personal assistant?“, I thought to myself: “Easy a founder associate does… Actually I have no clue it depends on the founder, I guess. He/she is a jack of all trades”. My friend cringed. This got me thinking, how often we don’t know what job titles mean?
The problem
Job titles and job description confusion make the market a mess, resulting in a waste of time for applicants but also for companies having to talk to candidates which are not a match.
Let’s take something I am familiar with: Business Development. At Delivery Hero, Biz Dev (Like the cool kids call it) meant internal consulting, at JOKR partnerships and in my last role everything from cold outreach to negotiating contracts.
But why do we use job titles if they often suck? The VP of people at one of the main German VCs told me: “It’s not clear what a skill is, it’s not clear what a job is, therefore we use titles, but they are far from perfect”. This results in tons of irrelevant applications “Our clients are really concerned by the low number of qualified candidates”, a friend working for a well know job boards told me.
And Ai is making this worst, check this post. A german company looking for a business analyst role in Germany just got 300 applications, the problem a third came from Morocco, those people didn’t apply on purpose it was done by some Ai. Another issue is that nowadays recruiting is: I need someone to do X thus I will hire someone who does or did X. Will this person do this job forever, what if there is someone out there for whom this role is the perfect next step?
So, I am exploring this with a friend who also had non linear career, started cutting trees, joined the army and moved into sales!
Why would you do this? Everyone uses LinkedIn, no? For now I know companies are willing to pay us for a job ad and millennials don’t use LinkedIn because it is not fun!
The execution
Here are the goals I have to reach:
Research current solutions (Job boards or similar)
Talk to 5 companies interested in hiring based on skills not titles
Start a Telegram group for 10 people looking to try a new way to job hunt
Build an MVP of a tool to screen sales people based on skills not CVs (To hire for skills you got to test them)
Gather 5 feedback on the MVP
I will keep it short because this all there is to it!
What keeps me up at night
This section from now on will be less structured, just a stream of thoughts:
Who am I to build in HR: tons of people messaged me “I work for xy VC, we backed (fill in name of big climate tech) I love your background and see you are building, we should chat”. What if I tell them I am no longer looking at climate? Will anyone ever give me money?
What if I don’t love this problem: any idea sounds great when you start, but then you encounter reality. It crashes you and makes you feel like a failure (Okay I am being dramatic). It happened with the various sustainability ideas, will it happen this time?
What if I am worsening my quality of life: I have spoken with a couple of companies paying me 3x what I will make as a founder, with remote first policies and enough cash in the bank. If I go this route the Indonesia trip, flaying a week to New York or go watch my football team around Europe (Hoping it makes it) it will be hard. A friend told me: “Saying no to this type of offers has been the hardest part of my journey”.
Here you have it, no filter, a window into my mind. As always reach out with feedbacks, especially telling me why this can’t work (But I also appreciate praises :) )!
On a last note, a co-founder update, I broke up with someone who I worked with for almost 6 months, it all started in a coffee shop in Riccione and we went on building great things, talking to more than 30 VCs, interviewing more than 20 companies and stalking many more. Thank you for the journey I learned tons!