Amid the pandemic, many companies across sectors faced a financial crunch that resulted in employees losing jobs. However, as the Covid-19 cases have reduced across the world, firms have started hiring people.
In a view of this, various job portals are bracing up their model in order to provide the best services to the employee who are seeking promising employment. In a conversation with Outlook Business, the founders of Able Jobs spoke about market, product, competition and more.
Here are excerpt:
Ravish Agrawal: Able app is a skilling platform for graduates to get their first job. We help graduates and freshers get their first job in domains like sales, support, finance, and HR. Job seekers download our app then go through our training courses and post completion of the course we connect freshers to companies and get them jobs.
We are solving the problem of employability for non-tech graduates. Every year more than 6Mn+ people graduate with non-technical degrees like BA, BBA but struggle to get a job.
As per the study, 60% of people are not employable for a job. Our rigorous in-house designed training program ensures that fresh graduates learn the required skill to get the job. The courses are highly vocationally delivered online with help of experienced trainers.
What is your biggest USP that differentiates the company from competitors?
Siddharth Srivastava: We get people jobs. We have helped more than 25,000 people get jobs over the last 1.5 years. Our pedagogy and training methodology differentiate us from the competitors.
Our training is fast-paced, a learner can comfortably complete a module in a short span; it is relevant, we only focus on the core skills and knowledge a learner needs. Also, the training is rooted in what happens in real life i.e. they are taught skills that they will use and apply not only in their interview but also in their jobs.
Over time we have closely worked with students and companies to understand the key gaps and designed content, proprietary frameworks, and assessment that helps us evaluate a candidate in-depth and provide them the skill required for the job. Our app ensures that the content is delivered perfectly and graduates can get the skills required for a job.
What is your business model like, growth & revenue since inception
Ravish Agrawal: Graduates can take a free course or enroll in a paid course and take rigorous training from us for the job. Our free courses are self-paced and post-completion of course you can apply to companies listed on the platform. Our paid offering is a very immersive program. It is a one-month long program, where we have live classes, skill practice sessions with trainers, and interview opportunities with companies unless you get a job.
Today we have more than a million downloads, a total of 25,000+ placements, and a growth of 80X in the last 18 months.
How do you foresee the industry? With so many companies working in a similar space, what different Able Jobs are bringing to the table?
Siddharth Srivastava: Most non-technical graduates struggle for jobs even after 6-12 months of graduation. This is because the practical job-ready skills required to get jobs are not taught in our college. Most people have to apply to hundreds of companies before getting their first job. During this process, they end up learning what it takes to get a job. At Able jobs, we make the whole process very simple and get them jobs 11X faster.
Our students are more confident, well-versed, and high performers as compared to other students. They have the confidence to crack the toughest aspects of the job because of the repeated practice.
Our accurate AI feedback helps students know how to precisely structure their responses practice until they make themselves perfect. Our training helps candidates to win accolades even at their work. They consistently perform better than others.
AI is projected to be the next market. How is AI contributing to the making of your products and services?
Swatantra Kumar: At Able app, we are training lakhs of students every month and in order to give them the best learning experience, we have designed an AI model which provides feedback on subjective answers in seconds.
We teach people sales and support skills which are daily subjective. There could be multiple answers to a question like How to sell a pen or How to treat an angry customer which makes it difficult to give feedback to students.
We are training tens of thousands of students every month and in order to give them the best learning experience, we have designed an AI model which provides feedback on subjective answers in seconds. Users can do exercises on the app, submit the answers and get paragraphs of feedback to improve their learning.
We have created smart chatbots that help people learn sales and support skills. The chatbots stimulate the interaction sales or customer support interaction between two people giving them a real-world-like practice and upskilling them.
Tell us about the new edtech vertical that you have launched. What is the vision behind this product?
Siddharth Srivastava: We have launched a skilling program where we are helping people get guaranteed jobs. We take a small admission test before enrolling in the program and extensively teach people for the job and then connect them with companies. The vision is to provide a helping hand for people who have very high intent to build a career but are not able to realize due to access to opportunities or proper guidance.
We envision a world where people irrespective of their background can upgrade their socio-economic status by getting a good job and we can create a customized learning path for them.
Which are the sectors that are actively hiring? What is the current scenario of hiring in the field of non-tech jobs?
Ravish Agrawal: We are seeing increased intake across sectors these days. Over the past couple of months, we have seen tech startup and growth-stage companies hiring, however, the situation has become sector agnostic these days.
In the last couple of months, we have received requests from sectors like retail, microfinance, and now even Aviation companies have started hiring as well. The market is getting flooded with job offers now and it is for the skills candidates to grasp.
