Tuesday, 1 October 2013

Mounza wants to help students find their dream job (or a job at all)


Mounza wants to help students find their dream job (or a job at all)

Mounza Facebook


The process of applying for jobs felt so daunting in college, I opted for the “easier” route of joining the Peace Corps. For those who don’t want to spend two years living in a remote village, Mounza is here to help.


Mounza launched an app today that helps students keep track of all on-campus career events.


It works with career centers, academic departments, organizations, and clubs to consolidate all of their events into the app. Students subscribe to the types of events they are interested in and receive notifications when a relevant event pops up.


“Our worst pain point thus far was finding a job right after college,” founder Sharran Deora told VentureBeat. “[My cofounder and I] did not know what to do or when the career events were. We were lost. After quite a bit of hustling, we both joined Lehman Brothers and helped recruit at universities. We noticed there was limited transparency, and Mounza was born.”


Finding a job is tough these days, even for college grads, and in many cases, especially for college grads. 44% of young college grads are underemployed and many are living at home. An expensive college degree is no longer a guarantor of employment.


On-campus organizations are generally active in helping their students figure out potential career opportunities. Despite these good intentions, the information is fragmented across multiple bulletin boards, email lists, and websites, and the existing options for students (in my day) were either to be exceptionally diligent or to rely on serendipity to find interesting career events.


Mounza’s goal is to help students make the most of the resources available to them, such as degree advice, workshops, information sessions, career fairs, entrepreneurial panels, and so on. These events are numerous, but not easy to stay on top of.


If you are interested in any and all writing jobs, or specifically want to work at Google, you can use Mounza to ensure that you know when a relevant event is being held, access information about it, and add it to your calendar.


Mounza is currently working with 25 organizations at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley. The business model is to charge companies who want to promote their events on campus $100 a month.


Mounza competes with companies like Meritful, Endorse.me, Identified, Collegefeed, and Readyforce that take more of a LinkedIn style approach to college recruiting. Students can post profiles, search for opportunities, and connect with alumni and potential employers.


Mounza, in contrast, is not a network or a job search engine.


“We strongly believe the best ways for students to distinguish between each other are their intangibles,” Deora said. “Thus, career events are imperative to  students and recruiters succeeding in finding the right match.”


Mounza has raised angel funding and plans to bootstrap for the near future.




Mounza wants to help students find their dream job (or a job at all)

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