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For Love or Money? eHarmony Entering the Job Search Market
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The next time you want to find a date and a job in the same sitting, you’ll be in luck — eHarmony job matching will soon exist. The dating website plans to forge a successful career service with the same principles used for building romantic relationships.
“It seems like there’s a social problem here that needs fixing, much in the same that when we started with relationship matching, there just seemed to be a problem,” said Grant Langston, eHarmony’s vice president of customer experience.
EHarmony believes it can successfully enter the market of websites, crowded with the likes of:
Even social media giants like Facebook and, more explicitly, LinkedIn have worked to control the online meeting of job seekers and employers. These sites are established, understood and oligarchic.
EHarmony believes they can stand apart from the crowd with their approach to understanding job applicants. Langston echoes that thought. He thinks eHarmony’s ability to solicit more honest responses from applicants will give them the competitive advantage when matching their values with a company.
Theoretically, eHarmony job matching will unite eager applicants with wanting companies based on experience and values they both deem important. It hopes to understand applicants and companies by knowing them. This stands in contrast to planned interviews, other job sites or online applications where rehearsed answers have become all too common.
The finished product is still a long way off, as it probably won’t see the market until late 2014. The criteria for gathering information hasn’t even been decided either. Also up in the air, how much it will cost to use eHarmony for finding work.
The differences are numerous between a healthy, loving relationship and a fulfilling career. eHarmony has the challenge of merging their similarities. They also need to stay true to their core competencies while providing job seekers and employers value.
Will it launch to rave reviews and massive success? Better things have failed and worse things have taken off. So who knows?
What really remains to be seen is how applicants interact with the questions. If the whole point of eHarmony’s strategy is to gather better applicant profiles, and most job seekers want to maximize their chances for a paycheck, eHarmony’s intent won’t necessarily matter. Applicants will still provide answers they feel give them the best chance at getting hired, which has been the same problem for as long as companies have hired.
The job market is already dense with options. eHarmony job matching will have to prove it delivers information other job sites fail to gather. If not, momentum tends to remain with the established players. Then again, remember when finding a date online was ridiculous?
This article originally appeared on The Resumator Blog.