JobCrunch.com.au was a self funded/bootstrapped with Kevin Rudd stimulus money (and a little bit from our savings account) developed by 3 Sydney ‘digital native’ entrepreneurs. The web site designed to help the Australian community to bounce back from the GFC. Built on 3 pillars – news, support, community; the site was designed to be a hub to assist people affected by the GFC bounce back.
- News featured live targeted news channels being aggregated using Yahoo! pipes.
- Support featured a library of career life cycle articles, tips, coping tools and resources (Beyond Blue) for the public from graduates, to out of work veterans and people looking to trade up.
- Community was fostered by the use of a forum for discussion and regular video content, Tweets and Facebook activity.
Built to be more than your standard cash cow- commercial job listing/board it’s modus operandi was to be ‘free for the people’. My 16 year nephew even chipped in to design the logo, it was an all hands on deck, get dirty, fun, fulfilling project.
Involving white boards/wireframes, to design and a rapid build in Umbraco CMS. The project leveraged the digital project management, technical and marketing expertise of the 3 company founders Jamie Andrei, Vince Zhou and Matthew Ho (in order as appear in the videos photo). It was a matter of putting your time and money where your mouth is, setting up a company structure and getting on with it.
Featuring video, regular content and supported by regular social activity (Facebook/Twitter/Viddler Video) the site was live for 18-20 months. Having recently depleted the sinking fund the site has been de-commissioned. One negative factor in mass up take was lack of access to marketing budget. Build it and they might come, roll out a brass band a project like JobCrunch would succeed in the market place. Business/life lesson here for us all.
There is still a gap in the HR/jobs space for a product with this ‘support/people’ niche. The big guys are touching on some of the themes, but they seem to be a bolt on to support the financial funnel, not a core principle. Upon reflection, looking at the current economic conditions, the project and site’s point of difference is still relevant.
Thanks to friends and family for the great support. To the whole team who chipped in with legal, design, development, free power and general warm wishes, we want to say thank you.
See you for the next great idea when we have access to air support (money) for the marketing push. Keep innovating & growing.
JA
Jamie is passionate about people, business and technology. He works at one of Australia's big 5 full service digital agencies across a range of SMEs to large ASX listed companies. He is an Account Director with a wealth of experience and enjoys; mountain biking, Muay Thai/BJJ, reading, creative business thinking and technology.