FresHires is an online socio-academic and socio-professional self-branding platform for college students, university students and fresh graduates with little or no work experience. Efunwoye spoke to HumanIPO on the uniqueness of the platform and how it is filling the vacuum created by LinkedIn and Facebook.
HumanIPO: What is Freshires all about?
Efunwoye: FresHires is an online socio-academic and socio-professional self-branding platform for college students, university students and fresh graduates with little or no work experience. We created the platform on par with LinkedIn and the likes of Facebook, bridging the gap they left untapped.
What would beneficiaries enjoy from the platform?
They would enjoy exposure, self-branding and showcasing. There are features such as video resume that they can use to promote themselves. The chat platform will be installed this week.
Specifically, how does it work?
You sign up, create your complete academic profile, upload a video resume, upload all substantiated evidence of your skills, chat with colleagues in other part of the world via the research collaboration platform etc. Once the chat platform is installed, you can lecture me from Nigeria. We both will be online and we can share screen, have a whiteboard for drawing and or demonstration. We can share files, video chat, audio chat and so on.
The platform supports self and portfolio branding, research collaboration, creating professional relationships. It serves as a social media platform and a job search engine. We have both volunteer jobs and non-volunteer jobs.
What vacuum do you think the platform is filling?
Fresh Grads jobs, exposure, branding and for people with little or no experience. Instead of wasting time on Facebook, people can use their time on FresHires.com.
But LinkedIn does something similar
LinkedIn targets the professionals and those with experience. FresHires targets fresh graduates, interns and those with little or no experience. There is also a section for mentors, educators, recruiters.
There is so much going on, on the platform. What is the common thread that links everything together?
Common thread is self-branding, skills showcasing. Whether you are talking to a colleague or a recruiter or a mentor or an educator on the platform, your goal is to showcase your skills and brand yourself. Showcase your hands-on skills and career-related abilities by posting videos, pictures and documents to your online portfolio. Create a brand for yourself to gain more visibility and exposure.
Who are your competitors?
Of course LinkedIn, we also found careerflo mimicking us and the other major job boards although we are not directly in competition with them because our services are uniquely different.
So how do you want to compete successfully with LinkedIn?
Our offerings are different, however we are not ruling out them adding some of our unique features to their platform. So we remain positioned to deliver our unique service not available on theirs. There is no place for research collaboration on theirs, we have it. No mentors connect on theirs we have it. No self-branding per se on theirs we have it.
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