How did you become involved with Identified?
We launched late September at UVA (the University of Virginia). The site was founded by two guys out of Stanford Business School, Brendan Wallace and Adeyemi Ajao. Brendan had the hardcore finance background, went to Stanford Business School. Ade started a social networking site called Tuenti.com; he’s the product, social media guru. Tuenti is still the largest social networking site in Spain, and they just got bought out by Facebook for 100 million Euros. But Identified was always their primary vision. They launched it in beta out in Stanford last spring. I got looped in because they needed someone who’s younger who could speak to the recruiting needs and kind of translate product feedback from the user to those guys. That was my role. I’m a junior founder and director of campus outreach. My job has literally been to reach out to students along the East Coast. Amherst is the only NESCAC school we’ve been able to hit. It’s mostly been bigger universities with business schools.
How’s the site doing?
Close to 15,000 users, 280 companies actively recruiting. Those numbers obviously continue to grow as we grow as a company. Networking is valuable (81 percent of jobs are received through some form of referral). Amherst specifically has a very valuable alumni network, but one thing I’ve learned through this whole process — Facebook, yes it seems kind of immature, it’s for fun, you look at pictures, you play games, but we’ve amassed this very, very valuable social network on there that very easily, if done the right way, can be transferred into jobs.
How does Identified work?
The average college student has over 500 Facebook friends, and what Identified does is you log in with a service called Facebook Connect. We do that because we pull three pieces of information from Facebook and only three: your name, work history you have listed, any school history you have listed, nothing else. No photos, no wall posts. We’re not interested in anything but those three pieces of information. With that information we can tell what companies, what industries you’re already connected to. As opposed to the Amherst grad who works at the company you want to work for, which is still powerful, we also pull their friends so you have access now to this greater network. I can see where my friends work, where their friends work. I have 600 friends, but I have access to 85,000 friends of friends. We now have a way to leverage that information to help you with the job search.
How does the actual process work?
We ask you to complete a profile. That profile is completely private except for that company’s HR that you apply to. We act as a head hunting firm for students. If you fill out your profile, we make that information organized and normalized so when companies search for specific criteria — when they say they want an Amherst, Middlebury or Williams girl who’s graduating in 2011 with these majors, this sort of GPA — we send you an e-mail telling you that this company just did a search for this type of student that you are; do you want to apply?
We brand ourselves what the common application was for applying to college. Fifteen years ago, you couldn’t apply to 10 schools or more. It would just take you so much more time. We take it for granted. Before the common app, it just wasn’t possible. Jobs are the same way. Most of the time, you’re sending the same résumé to the same places. Why do the same thing in two different places when you can do it in the same place? Identified connects students [with companies], whether they be digital marketing, offline marketing, or publishing. It connects you to all those companies that you wouldn’t be able to interact with, as opposed to a general job posting. When you want to apply, you can use one résumé, one profile to apply to multiple places.