Hi Guys!
Co-founder of Airpnp here. I was hoping to get some feedback on this new product for discovering social science and STEM grads called GradSquare.
Social issues aside, we built GradSquare because we wanted to change the way people applied for jobs online. You can make an argument that job classifieds actually became worse after they transitioned from newspapers to online. At least when you responded to a job ad in the newspaper you talked to a real person. Now most people just have this awful experience of throwing your resume into some void where it will never be seen.
Since the internet can do a lot more, we designed GradSquare to put people in touch with people - employers can still post jobs, but they can also send messages and chat with candidates in real time to ask questions or even conduct an interview. Candidates can also search and send queries to recruiters. Employers can invite job-seekers to apply to a posting, and candidates can ‘Favorite’ jobs to express their interest. The entire platform is designed with the idea that employers should be directly in touch with candidates. All this is to say that we’ve eliminated the void from the online job application experience.
The social problem that motivated us to build GradSquare was the huge gap between universities and industry - people were going to college and grad school in record numbers, but it was still difficult to discover technical talent. Companies either had to post ads on mega job boards (which generated too many unqualified applications) or had to develop relationships with a handful of universities (which generated too small a talent pool). Additionally, prospective students want to know the job placement of graduates when deciding on a degree program, but universities were struggling to provide this data.
So we built GradSquare to bridge the gap between universities and industry: it’s a centralized app where employers can find graduates from every university, and universities can get valuable information on the market traction of their graduates.
Looking forward hearing from you all! And please ask me anything!
Airpnp