I’ve known that I wanted to go to school for business since I was in about second grade. Business has always intrigued me and I’ve been trying to find my place within that spectrum since then. When I was applying for college every time I spoke with someone about being a business major they recommended Northeastern University because of its co-op program. Since I graduated in 2009, as the country was going through hard economic times, getting a year and a half of work experience before I graduated sounded like a really good idea.
I entered Northeastern as a Business Major concentrating in Entrepreneurship but second guessed that as I was told that I needed a more “functional” concentration like Marketing. As I continued my degree I came full circle when I came up with what I thought was a really interesting idea. I was applying for my second co-op and just spreading my resume around. Even with what I considered a polished resume and the experience I had – I was still getting passed over for interviews for amazing positions.
I had an immensely frustrating week where I had 6 interviews in 4 days with no offers so I started applying to jobs on career portals and searching through job boards. After a couple of hours I was left with headache and confused about why we needed to fill out different applications for each job. This issue was solved for college applications when the Common App came about and I couldn’t understand why that couldn’t be done for entry level jobs.
I spent the next year doing research and learning as much as I could – about everything. I read books, articles, and blogs and spoke with anyone who would talk to me. I played the “student” card a lot and went to events for discounted prices and asked for advice and was a sponge. There’s an entire entrepreneurial community in Boston (and the country) and there was so much information to take in. I learned a lot about HR tech, as well as equity, website development, good UX/UI design, our legal needs, accounting, pitching, and more. While there’s certainly more that I don’t know than do know – I’ve loved learning more and think that I’m getting closer to figuring out where I belong.
My company, Prospective Plus, is building CareerApp as the “Common App for jobs”. We allow candidates to create a single, strong job application and can apply to multiple positions with one click. Our focus is to allow new grads to showcase their past achievements and positive traits, in and out of formal work experience, and express their potential. Employers then receive a robust application and also have the opportunity to search the candidate pool to find candidates. We don't believe that a resume is enough and we're addressing pain points for candidates and employers.
We also just started working on a Career Fair tool built around our central idea. The goal is to help employers and candidates connect before, during, and after a career fair. This idea has a mobile and web component, would eliminate the need to pass around paper resumes at the event, would get companies and candidate on our site, and would give recruiters access to career fairs they couldn't attend in person.
We’re still early and building and growing and fundraising- but we’re a passionate team that believes in this company. So despite the ups and downs that come with entrepreneurship and despite the fact that I have no idea what my future holds – I’m excited to continue down this path a see where it takes me.
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Phoebe Farber is a Senior at Northeastern University in Boston and the Founder & CEO of Prospective Plus, which has built CareerApp.me - the Common App for Jobs. Connect with Phoebe via @PhoebeFarber, @CareerApp, or phoebe@careerapp.me .
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