“In your dreams” they said, but chances are, it’s closer to becoming a reality than you’d think.
The traditional job hunt. I swear there should be therapists around the world dedicated to rehabilitating these exhausted job seekers from the costly hassle they have had to endure. If I had a penny for every demotivated jobseeker I speak to each week, I’d be able to buy homes for you, me and my family on a beach in Hawaii…
We’ve all had those moments when we’re scrolling through our Linkedin feed and see a sweet little tweet about some amazing dream job. For a split second, our heart races, the butterflies come for a visit. That warm and fuzzy feeling that comes when visualizing the potential of team spirit at the office and passion behind the work you do.
We think for a moment about applying for it, but then realize that there’s at least a couple hundred people like me out there who want it just as much. And then we hesitate and scroll past the posting as if it were nothing. Because the thought of potentially being rejected felt too threatening. A fight or flight response. The jittery butterflies left before you could even find where to click “apply”.
That’s part of why I, like so many others, found it so difficult to identify and land that dream job: you don’t feel motivated to apply for it in the first place, which results in some kind of a primal response when thinking about the mountain of work it would require to shift and tackle the entire recruitment process. “DISCOMFORT, GO AWAY!”.
There’s the fear of future rejection, bundled with the “bargain” 2–for–one deal of including all your past rejections and fears too. You sit there, thinking to yourself “No Ms, definitely don’t want to go through that again, avoid this potential blow to the ego at all costs!” Instead you stay where you are, even if it’s not right for you, in your little, safe and protected bubble of comfort. No more “Wim Hoff” philosophies pushing you to move closer to what makes you uncomfortable to make you stronger like an ice bath up in this place.
Staying at that current miserable job continues to demotivate you into more frustration and powerlessness. Oh such a pity. And for the record, you’re not alone. A study by Randstad has found that job seekers spend an average of over 26 hours per month searching for their next position. To add to the matter, only 70% of jobs are publicized due to high fees for companies, meaning you have to basically look through an intuitive magnifying glass to find that job posting with the kind of recruiter behind it that’s ready to take you for lunch. At least you don’t have to feel lonely during this process, because 80% of the working population also feels unhappy with their current job and are scratching their heads at the effort ahead.
And we’re just getting started. You jump out of your seat when you read an email that some cool company has shown interest in you and would like to invite you for an interview. The rollercoaster of emotions kicks in, after being rejected a couple of hundred times in the matter of a few months, you finally feel a glimmer of hope. This is normally followed by a lack of response, lack of feedback about the applications, false hope when being called into more interviews only to be let down by a passive email down the lines of “We regret to inform…, unfortunately…, we have decided to proceed with someone else…, you’re just not cut out for this…, it only took us 7 interviews for us to make up our minds about you…, etc etc”. And the companies really aren’t to blame for this. The influx of applications, lack of resources and the amount of manual sorting for companies makes it difficult to execute effective communication to everyone involved. Let’s return to that butterfly hunt.
If you had some kind of fairy godmother around to make the recruitment process and job hunt as streamlined and simple as possible, what would your dream scenario look like? Straight out of my imagination, I can mention a handful. For jobseekers; a fast track to find the ideal job, plenty of feedback about your application, fair processes where you are being seen for who you truly are rather than biases in traditional recruitment, automated applications, the list goes on.
For companies, a world where talent is brought straight to your door for free, allowing confidence and empowerment with companies in choosing their candidates for interviews, drastically lowered costs, equalized exposure for small and large companies doesn’t sound too bad. The extraordinary truth that many are preaching but few are practicing, is that technology has recently advanced to make these scenarios a reality. A perfect and balanced combination where all of these needs are being met are fully achievable, and would completely revolutionize the way recruiting and job hunts look today.
Now I’m sure you’re thinking, in a world full of tech entrepreneurs and innovators, in the day and age of Elon Musk and Richard Branson, why has a problem that concerns most individuals on the planet at least once in their lives not been solved yet? I wish I had a great answer for you. To be completely frank with you guys, most current solutions on the market focus on addressing the problem of matching jobseekers with recruiters and facilitating hires through the eyes, needs and perspectives of the recruiters.
This contributes to a gap where it becomes increasingly difficult to sort through candidates, and unless you are a large corporation with loads or resources and status, the chances of amazing talent actually reaching out and applying are, well… slim to say the least. The postings for the job openings at SMEs are not prioritized in the same way that the big corporations postings are.
Why haven’t institutions and large companies invested more resources in simplifying the entire process that would benefit not only the companies themselves, but society as a whole. Technology has recently advanced to a point where not using AI and machine learning to simplify the process and shortening the lead times is a waste of non utilized tech and knowledge. It’s kind of like making an effort to walk all the way to the shop in 40 degree weather to buy Ben & Jerrys, only to place it in direct sunlight and watch it melt while I call my friends to see if they can bring me a drink with ice to cool me off.
The fact that nobody is approaching this from the angle of the jobseekers was surprising. I personally fell victim to this mess when coming out of college. Started somehow doubting my own capacity and feared I was alone, but I was wrong. Most people struggle and grind, sometimes for months on end, to land a new role. Finally, my team and I decided to do something about it. We’re a group of young entrepreneurs who have one goal: to take manual labor out of job seeking.
We want to make it easy for people to find opportunities that are right for them, so they can focus on what they love, and not on the tedious task of searching endlessly online for jobs. That’s why we’ve created Swiftly — a platform that uses AI to search across all markets 24/7 to find jobs that are relevant to your skill set and interests, as well as provide transformative feedback surrounding your application progress. Swiftly applies on the jobseekers behalf in a fraction of the time that a manual application requires.
So, what does this mean for companies? It means that you never have to waste a second on flipping through hundreds of CVs nor waste money on lengthy recruiting processes. You probably think we are like every other solution out there trying to match candidates with jobs and shaking when it comes to delivering promised value. Here’s the honest truth; We will refrain from approaching you unless we have found the most perfect candidates that we know you will love!. Unlike current solutions on the market, we require very little effort from the company’s side. We will never depend on companies like yours to successfully work our magic and bring value straight to your inbox. Using Swiftly to browse candidates, view information, specify specific requirements aligned to the job and posting the job is simple and free with us.
Feeling curious about somebody we matched you with? We’ll help facilitate an interview! And this is where our solution is 1/10th of the current market price for recruiting. We pre-screen candidates and do all of the quality work for you, skipping the “fomo” that traditional recruitment causes, like missing a great candidate in a pile of CVs that get tossed.
The bottom line is basically boiling down to candidates fully being able to remain excited for when an exciting offer comes around, and the same stands for the recruiter. Normally the mental pile of work on the desk gets higher and higher and higher in a traditional recruitment setting. But the power of Swiftly actually allows both parties to enjoy those exciting moments when a dream job and candidate is in the pipeline. Let’s catch the butterflies and make the feeling last. Finding a job is supposed to be one of the most exciting times in your career. Let’s own up to that and make your dreams happen, together!