Why I'm building a job board for gen z.

Why I'm building a job board for gen z.

Written by

Cameron Blackwood

I'm 27 years old, meaning I'm either the elder statesman of Gen Z, or the youngest millennial. Growing up, almost nobody I knew aspired to work in startups (or technology in general), instead aiming for careers in banking or law, which would be my personal hell. In the UK, you tend to be judged as successful once you land on a "grad scheme" after attending a good university. It's the path everyone wants you to take.

Interestingly, attitudes seem to be shifting among the youngest members of the workforce - they're valuing learning opportunities, responsibility, sustainability and work life balance, which are all factors barely thought about in times gone by. Also critically for my business model, they aren't afraid to move jobs.

These factors, despite their importance to a rapidly growing sector of the workforce, are woefully underserved in the world of legacy job boards. As a result, I am launching StartupGradJobs in collaboration with my founding engineer, Louis, a real life Gen-Z member! The jobs will be easily shareable, with no friction to applications and the most important factors (both non monetary and monetary) front and centre. The phrase "competitive salary", is also banned!

We're both coders by trade (although, I'm a career changer, having previously been in tech sales and recruitment). Therefore, we're building in house, using NextJS, Supabase and Vercel. These are very reasonable cost-wise so rushing towards revenue generation is not required. In terms of marketing, I'm looking at leaning hard into TikTok, providing useful bite sized information for graduates. Having already built up a small following sharing career tips, I'm hoping to leverage this.

Has anyone else build in this niche?


Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

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