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People Mentality Inc., an employer branding agency, will be featuring a series of HR Tech partners to share more about their background stories as well as how users can benefit from engaging them. No tool is perfect, but every one of them is unique in their own way which is where the value lies for the various users. Find the best tools that suit your needs, mix and match based on your context and grow your business from there!
In the third issue of People Mentality Tech Feature, it’s our pleasure to have with us Charlotte Lim, Co-founder of JobTech, to share her insights on the tool. Let’s find out a little more about JobTech and how we can tap on some of its features.
Interview Summary
Sam: What made you decide to start JobTech? Where did you see the opportunity?
Charlotte: JobTech is an Artificial Intelligence and Big Data analytics company that provides real-time sensing of the labour market. My co-founder and I started JobTech because we felt there was a lack of complete and precise information on job possibilities and the skills required for jobseekers. Today, our engine analyses millions of job postings every day from around the region to derive insights into current and future job roles and skills. Our semantic-based job matching platform also helps to automatically screen resumes for recruiters and HR professionals.
Sam: How did the name JobTech come about?
Charlotte: “Job-Tech” means using technology to reduce inefficiencies in the job market. Our core technology took 10 years to build by top researchers at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), a part of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
Sam: How did the idea of JobTech evolve along the way? Why did it transform the way it did?
Charlotte: We started JobTech with a social motivation to help jobseekers, particularly Singaporean PMETs find jobs. The JobTech jobseeker site continues to be free, and is part of our CSR efforts to help PMETs. We realized that the real-time labour market insights that we provide are critical not only for the individual, but also for employers and governments keen to better understand their worker needs and plan for the future. Hence, we extended our platform to provide more accurate job matches and more insightful skills assessments to take the pain out of traditional job searches and matches.
Sam: What was the most memorable moment during this startup journey? What lessons did you learn from it?
Charlotte: A most memorable moment was when a job portal started to block our re-direct to their jobs even though our site credits all job listings to the portals and refers visitors directly to them (at no charge). The job portal is just one of our many public data sources but it hurts the experience of the out-of-work PMETs that we have been trying to help. At that time, we had about 5,000 users, out of which ~90% PMETs.
We were humbled by an outpouring of support for what the JobTech team has been trying to do to support retrenched PMETs.
Some examples of our users’ reactions:
“I still believe that (what) you are trying to do with JobTech is important – in fact more important now than ever. I also believe that the solution to help PMETs rest in a unique collaborative ecosystem between public and private sector….. So I hope you guys don’t stop”
“Hey, you guys are doing the right thing and making things right. Hope you will consider reviving the portal.”
The support also gave us extra motivation to continue our CSR efforts to help our PMETs. Therefore, we started building a stronger and better platform that will offer more jobs from additional online public data sources. We are planning to offer thousands of exclusive jobs which are not available on any of the job portals in Singapore.
Sam: What are your thoughts about the HR Tech space?
Charlotte: The region is starting to embrace HR Tech. In Singapore, for example, JobTech’s Online Jobs Scan shows that the number of HR jobs that require digital and data-related skills has been increasing over the past 1 year. We believe however that it is important that technology is applied with a people-centric approach. JobTech’s enterprise platform helps to simplify and speed up the recruitment process by automatically screening resumes so recruiters can spend more time making deeper personal connections.
Sam: Who would you recommend to use this tool?
Charlotte: Anyone can use our tool! Whether you are an active jobseeker or someone who takes charge of your own career, JobTech’s website offers lots of free and useful information on where the jobs are, who is hiring, what skills are required and how the individual’s unique skills match the jobs. Our 100 enterprise customers are represented by governments, banks, hedge funds, multi-nationals and others.
Sam: Where can people find out more if they are interested?
Charlotte: They can go to our website: https://jobtech.sg/ or email me at charlotte@jobtech.sg.
Closing thoughts
JobTech’s social mission of helping the PMETs, in particular the displaced ones, build a useful platform to access jobs in the market is what resonates with me the most. With the use of AI and analytics, it provides an even more robust solution that creates greater value for both jobseekers and companies alike.
Moving forward in this VUCA world, data is key in equipping HR with the ability to make more informed decisions. With the right kind of data and ease of accessing it through tools like JobTech, that’s where it enables us to do our job so much more easily. This translates to more time freed up from transactional work and in turn, opportunity to do real value-adding assignments. That said, HR still needs to step up and be ready to handle such changes. Only then can we as a profession collectively skill up and scale up the value chain to become a true business partner.
Together we can create a better workplace for tomorrow!
