We recently got to hear the “Workible” story from the one and only Fiona Anson.

Fiona is a serial entrepreneur who loves innovation and has created multiple successful ventures. Fiona has won Sydney Businesswoman of the Year and was a NSW Finalist for Telstra Businesswoman of the Year. She is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Workible, an innovative mobile and social recruitment platform that makes hiring fast, simple and affordable.

Workible is the largest connected network of job sites in Australia that are all using the same technology and making it easier to find jobs. Workible originally started as a job board and recruitment company. Today, Workible has evolved into a data and HR technology company.

Neither Fiona or Alli had a background in technology or HR for that matter.

So how did they do it?

Fiona and Alli started the business with the goal to make it possible to find flexible work, it’s also how they came up with their clever business name, “Workible.” They wanted to make it easy to find a job that fit an individual’s availability, skills, personality, preferred location, favourite companies, and be customisable to their life. Today we have the flexibility to customise anything and everything, so why should jobs be any different?

At their core, Fiona and Alli believe everyone should do what they love. “We love what we do, so we inherently believe everyone should love what they do too” expressed Fiona at our week two workshop. This is the spark that drives the inspired female founders every day.

Early on in their startup journey Fiona and Alli noticed that job seeker applied to countless jobs, without much response. Time and time again they would hear job seekers ask the same question: “How do I get a job if no one will tell me what I need to do to get the job in the first place?”

Since Fiona and Alli started as job seekers themselves, they were wedded to the job seeker problem. Currently, when job seekers apply online they very rarely receive any communications let alone feedback for the applications they submit. Fiona and Alli saw an opportunity to tackle this challenge.

Today, Workible has revolutionized the job seeker’s experience while disrupting their industry. It the only platform of it’s kind to give the job seekers feedback on how they can secure the job of their dreams. Workible conducts a job seeker survey every single year and hones in on the issues that job seekers face.

The result of knowing your customer and interviewing them?

A platform where job seekers know what employers are looking for, timely feedback and suggestions for areas of improvement for future applications.

Currently, the average job seeker applies to 100 different jobs over the course of six months before they find a position. That also means 99 rejections with no feedback. The average time it takes graduates to find a position in their industry upon obtaining a degree is about nine months. For graduates who did work placement as part of their degree, Workible found that they found a position four times faster, as they had work-related skills.

Understanding your customer’s problem and being in constant contact ensure you are creating something that they will use. “The next generation of what we do and came about from customer research” stated Fiona as she was taking us through how Workible discovered their customer.

If Fiona and Alli hadn’t started asking job seeker questions, on what their biggest problem was, they wouldn’t be able to make a pivot and built a product that customers wanted. They are the first company that took the time to survey job seekers and asks them how many applications they do and how long it takes them.

After reading multiple job seeker surveys, these female founders knew they had to do something about the current situation.They realized that if they could use logarithms for matching employers and job seekers they could re-engineer it and see where these companies and job seekers didn’t match. Having access to this information meant they were able to provide unsuccessful applicants with valuable feedback on where the gaps were.

By asking the employer’s, really specific information of what they were looking for including skills, experience, personal attributes, qualifications and where applicants had worked meant that Workible could put together an accurate profile of what each company was looking for. Employers also have the ability to shortlist candidates on the platform. This enables Workible to see what applicants have in common as well as trends of what employers are looking for.

This way when a company does employ a person in a certain role, Workible is able to understand what the company is looking for and therefore can provide accurate and timely information to job applicants. As soon as a job is deactivated Workible sends the applicant information on how they compared and suggestions on what they can do next time to put their best foot forward.

What’s next for Workible?

To bring job seekers that information before they even apply!