New HR platform uses big data to combat structural unemployment

Structural unemployment is a form of unemployment caused by a mismatch between the skills that workers in the economy can offer, and the skills demanded of workers by employers (also known as the skills gap). Studies by institutions like Oxford and the World Economic Forum has shown that in the next 10 years, close to 50% of jobs stand the risk of being lost this way.

Thus, Governments all over the world are emphasizing skills redevelopment, companies are scrambling to provide up-to-date and relevant training, and individuals are struggling to keep up with the increasing pace of change of job requirements.

JobKred is a career management platform that uses big data to help individuals find the right career, learn the right skills and get the right jobs. Users can input their skills and receive recommended careers, identify and acquire the key skills employers are looking for, and also receive career planning recommendations.

JobKred CEO Gary Gan was inspired to create JobKred after tough experiences both as a career switcher, and a hiring manager. “In my previous startup, I was in charge of marketing a mobile stock trading app, but I had no previous experience in mobile app marketing, and I quickly realized that what I learnt from my business degree was outdated. I spent a few months struggling to understand and learn the basics of digital marketing, before managing to be successful. Similarly, as a hiring manager, it was tedious and time consuming to look for the best candidate. I kept thinking back to how data-driven marketing had become, and whether these principals could be applied to HR, seeing as great talent is the key to success in every company.”

JobKred helps individuals understand where their skills can fit complementary careers, or helps them stay relevant to industry changes in job requirements. JobKred also helps companies to automate their hiring, by using JobKred’s algorithms to automatically score incoming candidates for job fit, saving them time and helping them identify top talent.

At the heart of JobKred are machine learning algorithms, powered by millions of data points continually collected from all over the internet. This allows JobKred to maintain an accurate and self-improving snapshot of the current labour market, thus automatically keeping the platform relevant to industry changes, and empowers individuals and companies with a data-driven approach to talent development and talent acquisition.

“With JobKred, you can now know which key skills to acquire to stay relevant, or what to focus on to get promotions. For example, the key skills employers are looking for in Marketing Executives are hard skills like Social Media Marketing, Advertising, and Email Marketing. However, this changes markedly when you move up the ladder. For Vice Presidents of Marketing roles, employers look for soft skills and strategic skills, like Product Management, Competitor Analysis, and Strategic Planning etc. This knowledge allows individuals to self-manage their career trajectory, and our system will provide recommendations and guidance to help plan their career growth," says Gary.

Gary, an experienced start-up entrepreneur (ex-Head of Business Development at TradeHero), and CTO Steven Lee, data scientist and former researcher in NTU, founded JobKred in Singapore in early 2015. Together they envisaged an app that would empower every individual and company to make data-driven personal development and HR decisions.

Since their soft launch in August 2015, JobKred has garnered over 500 companies and 40000 individuals using their platform. Some of the major universities in Singapore are already exploring adoption of JobKred to provide automated career guidance for their students.

JobKred is currently offering a free trial of its platform to all recruiters at www.jobkred.com and job seekers at https://www.jobkred.com/hi

Additional information:

CEO – Gary Gan

7 years entrepreneurship experience. Successful serial entrepreneur and experienced marketer. Previously Marketing and BD Head of TradeHero, where he grew users to 300K in 7 months and was part of management team that raised US$10m Series A from KPCB China and IPV Capital.

https://sg.linkedin.com/in/garygan

CTO – Steven Lee

7 years of simulation and statistical data analysis experience. Major in physics and minor in mathematics. Previously research engineer in NTU. NTU Projects included building game AI, model to predict dengue outbreaks and data analysis of high frequency stock trading. Technical experience in MATLAB, Python and PHP. Co-founded a fashion drop shipping site.

https://sg.linkedin.com/in/chongeu