An idea to opportunities

We started with a name called "Daily routine based resumes" to re-think recruiting process at organizations primarily for youth who do not have work experience or education that is equivalent to on the job experience. Over a period we recognized that we can provide various career opportunities leading to employment pathways to youth instead of creating a new look of the resume where the employers will not be able to adapt to the new change!

 www.socialgetwork.org

Our Team

Our team and the entire OpenIDEO community were constantly working on finding pathways for youth using social media.  We read stories, learnt about real life challenges faced by youth who are excited about using social media and continued to bend our app towards the interests and usability of youth. 

Our collaborative efforts helped us to match the various relevant data (interests, passion, updates, likes, about me, professional and social information) with the career opporutnities out there in order to help youth with enormous opportunities, every day on their mobile phones or social media page. 

Our Users and Recruiters (Employers)

Our users were aged between 13- 28 years old typically and we had to focus on 16 - 25 year old youth to streamline our focus and value. They all had a dream - an ambition to pursue their interests! 

User quotes after learning about the app...

Haley, 15, 8th grade said " I would love to use an the app to help myself know about the opportunities so that I can start preparing for it, today. I would download the app"

Ananya, 19, College Junior said " I guess my friends and I would love to use an app that brings us to the world of opportunities"

Vishnu, 28, Ph.D student said " I don't think this app is only for youngsters but also for for Ph.D grads who are job market candidates to seek various opporutnity areas" 

Shreyas, 22, Senior Engineering Student said " I am looking for jobs now and I am interested in a management course too. But I don't know which one to choose as of now. I need to lookout for what's the best for me with options provided"

What do the recruiters say? 

Soumya, Sr. Technical Recruiter, US and India, spent some time in giving useful information about the hiring process that she follows at a Service based company. She said " I am interested to adopt new changes in the hiring process especially with the Full time candidates where I get 1-2 days of turn-around time. The app like Social Getwork is another resource that is inclusive of LinkedIn and other social media sites to give me higher probability of job applicants. Important things I look on a resume are skills, recent experience, email or phone number. It would be surprising for me to increase my productivity of making choices in 1-2 hours where I am answerable to my manager. Most of the people who are hired are aged between 22-30 yrs and sometimes they do not put in everything on their resume which eventually let's us decide the profile as pass or fail. I am interested in learning more about how you will be efficiently easing the process. We are waiting for interesting profiles of candidates."

An OpenIDEO member and a recuiter says, " I work in recruitment and if developed correctly, this could be the new CV! A great way to match talented individuals to the right job, and making it much quicker and easier from the employer end to sift through and find the right fit for the job."

Promotional video (amateur) https://animoto.com/play/U2P3xFltjJWRtggT8Kp6xQ

Key Learnings

Ah.. ha! We learnt that users play a vital role in building the app from the mock-ups, pilot, prototype, implementation and post implementation.
Every stage, we intend to meet youth around the world > test > gain feedback > refine > develop > gain feedback > refine > deliver > continue to work one step at a time.

Impact Journey 

How I was distracted? I was involved totally into the app development from the engineer's perspectives. My team kept advising me about the do's and don'ts to keep in mind. Everything that happened over the past 2 months kept me curious and did not allow my dopamine levels to reduce. I was addicted to transform!

How we reached together? The entire community supported by asking mind-boggling questions, thinking process and various tips to sharpen the idea. We made appointments to talk over phone, hangouts and met people around to ask about their likes and dislikes about the app. We spoke to a 10 year old kid to 85 year old people to give us valuable feedback while making the app mock-up. It was interesting to learn from everyone's viewpoint. 

How we will be doing things? Strategies, ideas, thought process, technological advancement - all needs a change, a constant change by design to understand the pain of the younger generation. We will be tracking two important locations to start with - Bangalore, India and Bay Area, California to reach out to several students and employers in the arena. This will help us gain insights from their perspectives. Using the mechanism we can virtualise the entire oppotunity-choice-welfare cycle on the app by simply converting the conversations, standpoints, mindsets, selection process, iterations, resumes, productivity-match and most of all interest match. 

Opportunity and Research Phase is to interact with Stanford University students on Oct 6th-end Oct in a classroom discussion and from there we will be able to reach out to many near by schools, colleges and employers in the Bay area to explain the working and design of the app. From Nov end to Jan end we will be testing similar test cases at Bangalore, India to build a single platform for youth with various backgrounds. 

Testiing and Feedback Phase
During the period of Nov 2014 - Feb 2015, we visited a number of colleges in Bangalore, India and US. These colleges were mostly tech and in science background. The exciting part was to ask the students for feedback about Social Getwork App using the mockup and popapp. 

Highlights - 

1. Students love Games! (Age group 10 - 25 years)

2. By the age of 21, most adults in developed and developing countries are placed in companies as entry level workers. 

3. But the recruitment system in most companies prefer skilled workers or experienced workers. The defining factor is with the skills that help the companies to solve problems in less time, efforts and cost. 

4. Games and social media are directly related bringing a bigger user base online. 

5. Students aged between 10 - 20 years are mostly studying or working in most countries. 

6. Students love games, they wish to "win" and gain some positive reward at the end of an effort.

7. A local farmer (uneducated) in a poor village in India calculates numbers faster than an average urban 10th grader. What if he is given technical and growth skills and has tie-ups with agricultural companies which eventually helps him to earn more? With education he could be a mathematician or an agricultural industrialist. He makes about 25,000 rupees/ month (~ $450).

8. Huge number of technical job opportunities are available and other sectors are growing.

9. Students are competitive. But the race is to "nowhere". 

 

Check out the updates for Social Getwork Application