Get a Free CV - and Let Your Next Job or Project Find You @ Next Mile

AssociatedL[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 11:31

Moved to Forum: Original Link

Enjoy searching through thousands of jobs to find one? We wouldn't (ask you to). Let your next job find you. We'll guide you to create an awesome CV that's free to download - then we'll connect you with jobs on your terms - permanent, freelancer, consultant, volunteer and so on.

Here's a short 1 min video to let you know a bit more: https://meet.nextmile.io/ozbargain

We've just launched this week and we'd love for you to come and take a look, create a CV, let us know what we can improve for you, and of course tell your friends if you think it'll help them.

Want a bit of background about why we've launched Next Mile? Well, keep reading…

When you really think about it, the way we advertise a job today and then have people apply to it hasn’t really evolved. We’ve basically gone from newspapers to online, meaning it’s easy to advertise a job anytime. It’s also become super easy for people to apply for jobs, but is that a good thing?

Employers quickly became inundated with applicants, most of which weren’t suitable. To combat this, they added layers of tech to help filter applicants. Most of this tech is expensive and doesn’t work that well, as they are based on interpreting unstructured CVs and job ads.

As employers became distanced from applicants, hiding behind the tech, feedback or worse, even acknowledgment seemed to disappear. Knowing this, people started to take a punt at far more jobs than they may be qualified for, or look at ways to game the system just to get noticed.

The result? Employers are inundated again, and the tech has really struggled to keep up. So what’s the solution? Well, more tech keeps getting layered on. It’s become a cat and mouse game.

This means looking for a job today, takes a lot of time and drives a lot of frustration. From an employer perspective, finding the right staff is taking longer and costing more than it ever has.

We’ve experienced this personally from both sides, and well, it sucks. We may not have all the right answers yet, but we’re having a go at fixing it because what exists today isn’t working.

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Comments

  • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 11:40
    +1

    Hi Ozbargainers,

    I'm Josh and I'm one of the co-founders of Next Mile, based in Sydney.

    Thanks for checking us out. I'm keen to answer any questions - whether they're about Next Mile or even just general questions about finding a job or finding staff. I'm happy to help if I can.

    As we've just launched, I'm sure there may be a few areas where we might have missed the mark for you. So let me know - I'd like to get on to fixing it for you right away.

    Cheers,
    Josh

    • Iluvfreebies-freeDel on 04/02/2020 - 11:45

      How is this any different from seek?

      • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 11:59

        Hi Eddie,

        Please have a look at my reply to @mysterybox below. I could talk about so many aspects :) but for me, these are the key differentiators. Happy to answer any further questions

        There's also a quick rundown of how we work on a video (link in the original post). But also it's outlined here: https://www.nextmile.io/find-work. But if you've got a moment I would encourage you to sign up and take look - there's no charge to try and we'd be happy to remove your profile if it's not for you.

  • mysterybox on 04/02/2020 - 11:44

    Is it same as seek.com or indeed.com?

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 11:54
      +6

      Hey @mysterybox,

      Not quite - what we do is guide you through a questionnaire to build a detailed profile of you that focuses on skills, experience and your preferences for your next job. You can download the CV and we also host it for you for free.

      Typically with Seek, Indeed or even LinkedIn after you've signed up you've then got to spend time (minutes, hours, days - it's different for everyone) to sift through job listings and then choose which ones you want to apply for. What we do is a little more like a recruitment agent - you've told us all about you and what you're looking for so we'll only contact you when a job that fits your criteria pops up AND you've got a decent chance of landing it. So if we send you a job it means you're in the right salary range, you've got the right skills and experience etc. To apply for a job takes minutes - there's no need to do cover letters, tailor your CV etc.

      Yes Seek, Indeed, Linkedin do all do this - but they largely rely on keywords in your CV/profile and look at your past job searches to send you recommendations - so it works some of the time. We ask you simple questions so there's no ambiguity.

      It’s also a two-way street - we encourage a lot more information out of employers through standardisation so you know exactly what the job is about when you apply.

      Discrimination is also a huge problem in recruitment today. What we do is remove things like photos, names, addresses - anything that may cause bias upfront so an employer can make a balanced judgement of your application before they get access to that information. i.e. it’s behind a paywall.

      Hope this helps build a better picture

      Cheers,
      Josh

      • mysterybox on 04/02/2020 - 12:01
        +1

        Thank you for the detail info

      • Eskibar on 04/02/2020 - 12:05

        On your website it says it is $50 for employers to see your details. Is it like $50 for every person they want to see of like $50 to unlock the feature to see everyones details.

        • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 12:19
          +2

          For employers on Next Mile - they can post a job and if we don't deliver then they don't pay anything, so there's no risk to try.

          If they want to interview say 5 people on their shortlist that are highly matched - they'll pay us $250. If they find 1 perfect profile they'll get away at only $50.

          Typical job boards like Seek cost upwards of $300 per ad posted. You're not guaranteed anything other than an advertisement for that. Recruiters charge anywhere from 15%-30% of 1 years salary for the person they place in a role.

          For Next Mile, I really do hope that we nail this for people and my aim is for employers to only to need to purchase 3-5 people's details (or less) to find a suitable person for a role.

          We're not aiming to be simply another job board. We are not sending employers 100's of unfiltered applicants with superficial information to review. We ask both talent & employers detailed questions so we can build a comprehensive profile of both a person and job. Most of this information makes it on to the profile - but some of it such as soft skills and preferences just feeds into the ranking of a person for a job.

      • Iluvfreebies-freeDel on 04/02/2020 - 12:21
        +1

        Thank you for your reply. We are in a recruitment culture where companies ask for video resume for a professional job. I personally had to do one for NAB and Inghams.
        Your platform will work low skilled/blue collar jobs like Baristas or factory worker. But I unsure how will your platform work for professional jobs like accounting, finance where employer are not just satisfied by a CV. They now require a customise cover letter and a statement addressing the selection criteria and some case a video resume/cover letter.
        Also only 10% of the jobs are advertised online, how you address this problem?

        • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 13:04
          +3

          Thanks, Eddie. A great question.

          The reason companies make you jump through so many hoops like recorded video interviews and tests before they speak with you is really just to whittle down sometimes hundreds of applicants into a shortlist of 10-15 that they can then have a conversation with. Then they'll whittle down some more and then proceed with face-to-face interviews of <10, probably about 5 people or so. The harsh reality is if they have 100 applicants for a role - it's unlikely all 100 of those applications get opened. I've spoken a bit above in the original post about why we have hundreds of applicants for a role.

          Some companies will use tools that scan all incoming applicants documents for keywords and match them against keywords in the job description to infer a match - don't use the same keywords and your application probably won't get opened. Basically, these types of systems provide a good guess at best - and yes, sometimes it works out, but not always.

          Others will use video interviews - some of which come with tech (like HireView) that will even score your video looking for things like the tone in your voice, your facial expressions etc. Again - just because you spend 30 minutes recording answers to all of their questions on video doesn't guarantee anyone will ever watch it. You could for a number of reasons get a low score and you'll be excluded.

          To go into a little more detail about why we don't need to go down this path - the profile you'll build with Next Mile goes into a lot of details about your skills, experience and preferences - you'll invest some time upfront to complete it properly but you do it once - not a version of it for every job you apply for.

          For example, you'll choose up to 10 key technicals skill and then you'll self-rate on the number of years experience you have and your level of proficiency - this allows us to match you at a much deeper level than you could ever do with a job title and a few keywords. We've also worked with an organisational psychologist to structure about 9 questions around soft skills so we match you with a company and role that's a good fit for you.

          Yes, we do allow you to record a video for your profile. But it's a 60-second pitch video that you record once (and ideally refresh periodically). It's just meant to be an introduction and to bring your profile to life. This isn't shown to employers until after the paywall though (to limit bias etc). We also don't do any scanning or analysis of the video to provide stats to employers.

          In terms of a cover letter - employers can post up to 5 short questions that you'll have to answer to apply. But we limit the length of their question and the length of your response so there's no onerous expectation. We ideally want people to be answering yes/no or one-sentence replies. This achieves the same thing as a cover letter but removes all of the expected filler text and gets straight to the point. I want people to be spending no more than about 5 minutes to apply for a role on Next Mile.

          What does this mean? We'll hopefully be very good at matching people for professional roles - we've just got a different approach of getting to the same endpoint.

          In regards to your last point - our view on why a lot of jobs never get advertised.

          1. Having hundreds of applicants flowing in to review is overwhelming, I've been there. You might not take long to post the job, but there's often a big-time commitment in the days afterwards. So employers naturally try to avoid this. We send filtered shortlists of warm candidates to avoid this.
          2. A lot of businesses (particularly small businesses) simply don't want to bear the cost of advertising a job if they're not guaranteed to find someone. If we don't deliver people employers want to speak with, they can simply close the job and move on.

          Thoughts?

          • Genieman on 04/02/2020 - 13:40

            @[Deactivated]: Hi Josh, Is your competency mapping model based on SFIA framework?

            • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 14:36

              @Genieman: Hi @checkoutmuthu,

              The framework that we map back to is the Australia Qualifications Framework (AQF). We were relying on an expert for that part - so I'm not whether there is any relationship to the SFIA framework, if at all.

          • dasher86 on 04/02/2020 - 19:08

            @[Deactivated]:

            We ideally want people to be answering yes/no or one-sentence replies. This achieves the same thing as a cover letter but removes all of the expected filler text and gets straight to the point.

            As a hiring manager one sentence or a yes or no answer is not going to cut it.
            I want to make sure my applicants have the basic grasp of English a d also persuasive writing techniques.

            • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 05/02/2020 - 00:23

              @dasher86: I have very mixed feelings about cover letters. If they're used as intended then they should give you a good feel for the candidate and complement the CV.

              However, given all the reasons I've outlined in the original post above, people apply for a lot of jobs. It's become a numbers game, understandably.

              In my experience, most cover letters I've received have probably been written once long ago and a few keywords are swapped out in a bid to make them more relevant for the job I'm recruiting for. They are often quite generic and full of filler words and don't really tell me a whole lot. There is also no guarantee that they weren't edited by someone else or written completely by someone else. Once in the past, I have paid someone to help me edit my boilerplate cover letter and CV.

              While our questionnaire is designed to make things easy. There are several sections for free text - the headline, bio, and work history. We have put limits on how many characters can be used, and we also limit the number of responsibilities or achievements someone can list for a job. This is by design not only to ensure people aren't creating 10 page CVs no one wants to read. But those limits encourage a quality response. People have to really think about what they're saying and how they say it.

              I would be looking to these sections on a Next Mile profile to gauge language skills and persuasive writing techniques.

              The purpose of the questions we ask on application is really just to cover any detailed specifics that are important in selecting who you want to interview.

              i.e. Are you available for international travel at short notice for periods of up to two weeks.

              If the answer is no, it might not be suitable for that employer to unlock that person's details for instance…

              I know this is a bit of a different way of looking at things. But I hope it achieves the same result for you. Thoughts?

        • jellykingdom on 04/02/2020 - 16:22
          +2

          Really? A chicken company wanted a video resume?? I've never encountered a professional engineering or project management role requiring anything besides a CV and usually cover letter (although my current role I didn't do one)

  • Samsungnote10 on 04/02/2020 - 11:58
    +1

    Free for employees
    $50 for employers to see your details,

    Interesting model,

    Good luck

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 12:04

      Thanks, @hellohello123.

      Typical job boards like Seek cost upwards of $300 per ad posted. You're not guaranteed anything other than an advertisement for that. Recruiters charge anywhere from 15%-30% of 1 years salary for the person they place in a role.

      For employers on Next Mile - they can post a job and if we don't deliver then they don't pay anything, so there's no risk to try. If they want to interview say 5 people on their shortlist that are highly matched - they'll pay us $250. So it's in the same sort of ballpark. But of course, if they find 2 perfect profiles they'll get away at only $100.

      On the flip side for anyone looking for a job - it's free. While it's not common for someone looking for a perm job not to pay (so nothing new here). Those looking for freelancing or consulting gigs typically pay anywhere from 10%-20% of their earnings to platform fees - which we think is crazy!

      • Samsungnote10 on 04/02/2020 - 13:20
        +1

        interesting, really is

        I gather its more suited to the middle to upper level type jobs,

        obviously you wouldnt need to use your service if you are looking for waitress or CEO of telstra

        • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 14:08

          At the moment we've tried to keep it pretty broad. Having said that I don't expect we'll be suitable for all types of jobs out of the gate. We really need people to start using it though and we'll take feedback onboard and adjust as we need.

          A waitress would be able to use our service to create a CV, but if a job for a waitress was posted and we had 1,000 waitresses in that area signed up, it might be tough to figure out who is the best person for the job. A big decider of why someone gets a waitress job probably comes down to attitude and personality more than anything - which you'll never get off a profile and it's a dangerous game to try to do that. Having said that - first movers might do ok :) We are considering a few options of what we can do here though. Stay tuned.

          And yes, I don't imagine Andy Penn will sign up to Next Mile (although he's more than welcome to). There really are just so many factors that go into placing a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, and a traditional headhunter is the best person for that job.

  • mouzii on 04/02/2020 - 12:52
    +1

    I'm really liking this concept so far - wish you guys all the best and would definitely consider using your service.

    As someone who's spent hours looking through Seek or LinkedIn, finding a way to streamline the process would be awesome and I think this is the closest so far.

    Out of curiosity, is the CV you create for job seekers exportable as a PDF file?

    • John K on 04/02/2020 - 13:13
      +1

      Yes. Just created my profile and downloaded the pdf file

      • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 13:39

        Cheers, John! I hope you like it :)

        We've done some road testing of that function and it's worked pretty well in our experience of late, but it's been a bit of a journey getting it to look right every time. One thing we're trying to iron out at the moment is the margin at the top of pages 2 onwards - you might notice that the text is sometimes shown a little too close and needs to be moved down a few lines. We're on it.

        But if there's anything else that looks off to you based on your profile, please send me an email to [email protected] with your PDF attached - i'll get the development team to look into it right away.

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 13:29
      +1

      Thanks, Mouzii. I hope we can help you out when you're next looking for a job.

      The short answer: Absolutely.

      The long answer: The profile you create with us will remain hosted on our systems, so it'll always be there for you and you can come back at any time and update it. Once your profile is created we'll give you a profile link that you can share with potential employers outside of Next Mile if you wish or post it to say a personal website or LinkedIn. In the future, we're looking at providing you with analytics around open rates and so forth, throwaway links etc.

      We hope that we can help you find your next job whether that's on Next Mile or not, so by signing up, it's not just about taking a chance on us and whether we'll be able to find you the right job. We hope you at least walk away with a nicely formatted CV that saves you a lot of time.

      You can also download your CV as a PDF if you need to send it or submit it elsewhere. The PDF has no Next Mile branding on it. The share link has a small Next Mile logo on the page that links backs to our site.

      • mouzii on 04/02/2020 - 14:39
        +1

        That is awesome stuff mate, great work!

  • perplex on 04/02/2020 - 14:06
    +1

    ill give it a go and see what happens

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 14:08

      Cheers, @perplex!

      Feel free to start up a chat in the app if you have any questions.

  • LuffyTuffyFluffy on 04/02/2020 - 19:51

    How many employers do you currently have on your books, and the number of active vacancies?

    How are you attracting new employers to use your platform? Do employer's need to complete a in-depth questionnaire in order to post a job? In my observation, many people are reluctant to sign up unless there's value/incentive. No different for employer's/HR when there is established recruitment avenues (seek, LinkedIn, in-house ads etc), contract with existing and/or preferred recruitment agencies.

    While the employer pricing model appears cost effective for larger organisations, it isn't as attractive for small businesses in the long run. They could put an ad on seek for couple of hundred and in return they can potentially interview as many applications as they receive and not be limited to pay per view.

    • lordra on 04/02/2020 - 21:40

      Same here, from what I understand. They can see all the candidate information, as many as they went. Then can then short-list and pay only for the ones they need.

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 04/02/2020 - 23:51
      +1

      Hi @LuffyTuffyFluffy,

      Firstly - cool username :)

      While we are starting to talk with employers to post on the platform, it is a bit of a chicken and egg scenario at present in regards to getting vacancies posted. In all honesty, we do need a little time to get the wheels turning as it’s not the logical place for us to start. I’ll explain why

      We’ve kind of flipped things around a little vs. how it works today on Seek, LinkedIn etc. Those platforms get employers to advertise jobs and then find people to hit those job ads and apply for them over the coming days/weeks.

      We’re taking a chance at a very different approach (for a number of good reasons). When an employer posts a job on Next Mile they do fill a reciprocal questionnaire to talent + will need to fill in a company profile on their first visit.

      When that job is posted it doesn’t end up on a website with thousands of other jobs organised in some high level groups for people to comb through. What we do is leverage all of the information both employers and talent provide to then match talent in our database for that role. Key things like salary, skills, experience, education, work preferences, availability and so on. It’s pretty extensive. Those matched talent will then get pushed the job description and can choose whether to apply or not.

      By doing it this way we aim to be able to get back to employers in under 48 hours with a shortlist of warm candidates that highly match their criteria. They won’t need any other screening tools or software to filter applicants. They’ll first receive anonymised profiles and they’ll pay to unlock the contact details of the candidates they want to take forward. Hence the chicken and egg scenario.

      What this means from a talent perspective is we hope to get to a point where we can help people put their job search on autopilot with us. We’ll let them know when a relevant job pops up and they have the first right of refusal. We’ll never share their details unless they’ve indicated that they’re interested in a particular role. A bit like the experience you get with a recruiter today.

      Today - the questionnaire that talent go through is designed to not only result in a CV, but it’s also designed to make people really think about their past experience and figure out what they want out of their next role. We’ll host that CV for them on our platform, and they’ll also be able to download it as a PDF. Let’s be honest - writing a CV is hard and takes a lot of time. We’re hoping to make it a little easier and we think there is value in that alone as we're giving it away for free where others charge.

      In terms of pricing - there’s no risk for employers to try our service. If they post a job and we don’t have the talent pool yet or they don’t like the profiles we present to them, then they can simply close the job and try another medium. We think we’re pretty cost-effective with our approach. On a job board you aren’t guaranteed any results for your upfront fee. Recruiters pricing is a whole other ball game and can’t even be compared.

      For small business. It’s a great call out. While large businesses with household brands struggle with the sheer number of applicants when they post a role - it’s often the complete opposite for a small business. A lot of small businesses we’ve spoken with don’t post jobs online simply because they don’t get value for money. They may get a few unsuitable applicants or sometimes none at all. I can’t remember the exact stat - but only about half of small business jobs are advertised online for these sorts of reasons. They typically don’t use recruiters either due to the cost. They are left with all sorts of tricks to find staff.

      I think our offering is pretty compelling for small business and has gained a bit of interest with those we’ve spoken with. They get their job ad put in front of targeted candidates who aren’t sifting through hundreds of job ads looking for names they know - so even with a weaker employer brand, they’ll get some attention. They then get a warm shortlist of highly matched candidates for free. They’ll also be able to download the job ad created on our platform to use elsewhere. They only need to pay if they get some compelling profiles.

  • cerealsmok3r on 05/02/2020 - 08:16
    +1

    Awesome initiative that you guys have started! I'm in the process of applying for a new job so will give this a shot and let you guys know of any feedback I have (:

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 05/02/2020 - 11:23

      Cheers @cerealsmok3r

  • OzHunterNSW on 05/02/2020 - 13:34

    STOP….. these are "information" harvesting sites…..
    You are effectively giving them everything about you….. STOP

    Write your own… you are the one who "lived" in your "curriculum".

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 05/02/2020 - 14:11

      Hi @OzHunterNSW,

      While it's true we do ask you to provide a lot of data to us so we can create your CV and match you with jobs. We do it for that purpose and that purpose alone. We're not LinkedIn, or Facebook - we don't leverage that data to serve you targeted advertising or sell your personal information to third parties. That's not what we are about and we outline this clearly in our privacy policy.

      We have been very thoughtful about the questions we ask you to answer and we've made a considered effort to reduce the amount of personal information you need to provide to use our service. For example - we don't ask you for things like your date of birth, gender, or your address. While it's a default for a lot of companies to collect this information "just because", we don't need it so we don't ask you for it. The only PI information we ask you for is your name, email address & phone number - which we need to be able to provide our service - which ultimately is finding you a job.

      The rest of the data you provide falls into two categories:

      Mandatory - this is basic information we need about you for our service to work. i.e. your work history. Most of this information already lives in the public domain for a lot of people - i.e. on a LinkedIn profile, or even on that CV you've typed up on word and sent off to countless companies you've applied for over the years (which is as good as public). The intention is that this information is information you'd be happy to share.

      Optional - most of the questions that fall into this category are things like preferences. If you provide this information we'll be able to deliver more relevant job matches to you. But we get it that some people might not want to answer those questions, so we've made it optional.

      I hope this helps provide a bit more clarity about Next Mile and what we stand for. I do completely understand your hesitation though given the number of scandals and bad practices by a lot of companies in recent years.

  • JFFTech on 05/02/2020 - 23:28

    I liked your business idea and it's a good nitiative. I have signed up and started creating my profile. I will let you know my feedback after a few weeks of usage. I wish you and your team all the success.

    • Associated[Deactivated] @ nextmile.io on 06/02/2020 - 13:40

      Cheers @JFFTech. If you need us at any time you can reach out using the chat on the site.

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