Q&A Wednesday: uCareer

January 30th, 2008

Today’s Q&A Wednesday is with Alan Ren, Founder of uCareer.net, a career website that streamlines the recruitment process both for the employer and the candidate by providing a trusted third party to collect and verify information about the candidate.

Why job search, is there room for something new?
Why not job search? The US online job search market is huge and was worth about $2.4 B in 2007. There are approximately 17 million users who visit various career websites each month. There are approximately 149 million people in the US workforce. Every year approximately 50 million people change their jobs. That means one-third of the entire workforce turns over each year because of new opportunities. The average American worker has had nine jobs by the time he or she is 34 years old because of new opportunities. However, if you look at the top career sites, they haven’t changed much from 10 years ago when I first used those tools. The same old process: employers post jobs and job seekers post their resumes, then employers search resumes and job seekers research positions and submit resume and then wait for an interview. Recruiting is still a very time consuming and sometimes very painful process. Some companies have been trying to solve the problem from the employers end by attempting to make the process easier and less painful for employers. However, very few resources have been spent on the job-seekers side.

There are also several problems for job seekers: 1) Going through multiple sets of interviews answering essentially the same most commonly asked questions. 2) No place to get help before the interview (the basic info of the process and how you compare with other candidates). 3) No feedback after interview (What type of person got the job? Why didn’t I get it? What qualifications did I lack? In what area do I need to improve? etc). 4) No place to share comments/experiences. 5) No central place to manage your career or track multiple career websites. UCareer is designed to solve these problems and utilize some very popular web2.0 features and applications to make the job searching process less time consuming and less painful for job seekers. We will be the first site using video as a primary communications vehicle for job seekers and employers to communicate with each other. We will leverage our social network platform to help better organize the job search process. There are approximately 16 million college students in the U.S. and about 4 million of them graduate each year. Our main target audience is between 18 to 35 years of age with a special focus on college students and recent graduates. They are tech savvy and willing to challenge the status quo.

Why Austin?
Despite having been contacted by several Bay Area VCs, there are a few reasons that I want to keep the company here in Austin: 1) My family and I love Austin and we wish to continue living and working here. 2) There are so many talented people here. 3) The biggest university in the nation in terms of enrollment, UT Austin, is here. In short, there is no other place I’d rather be.

I’ve received much input from UT-Austin students and they are just as passionate about this project as I am. I think that we will have as many as 50 UT-Austin students working as part-timers at UCareer by the end of 2008. They will be working primarily in the areas of video patrol, endorsements review and usability testing.

What did you learn from previous entrepreneurial ventures that will be helpful in getting UCareer started?

First and the most important: build something that customers really need, not what you think they might want and build something to make their life easier. Basically, find a need and fill it. Second, start something that you are passionate about. Don’t start something just because its trendy or everyone else is doing. Third, great branding and marketing is critical for a consumer site. How to use viral marketing promotion techniques to penetrate targeted demographics is the key to success for consumer/social network sites.

Are you seeking venture capital? Angel or VC?
We are not just looking for investment; we are also looking for partnership. We want a VC or angel(s) that not only can provide financial support, but also the industry expertise we need as well. I am looking forward to talking with the right partners in the Austin area. I’ve already personally invested about $50K bootstrapping this project and will continue to do so as long as I can before we team up with the right VC or angel partner.