Shake aims to match students with paid internships and jobs

A new Irish start-up is hoping to shake up the recruitment market, by matching students and recent graduates with paid internships and jobs.

The online network, called Shake, helps students and recent graduates connect with hiring managers and companies looking for employees. It uses software to analyse their experience to date suggesting relevant career opportunities they are qualified for.

The start-up was founded by Kevin Holler and Thomas Cullen, who raised €50,000 from family, friends and former colleagues in order to get the site off the ground.

Holler said detailed CVs and long lists of work experience hold a lot of value in the professional world but for a person starting out their career with little or no experience, it’s a different game.

As a result, Shake doesn’t ask students to upload their CV or input lots of text to boxes.

Instead they simply create a profile to illustrate their experience and skills.

Furthermore, students don’t have to spend time searching for jobs or internships.

The start-up uses matching algorithms to determine whether a student is a good match for an employer, helping the students and recent graduates to discover the best opportunities for them.

“Instead of letting users search jobs or courses we show them only the opportunities that best suit them and let them decide which ones they’re interested in,” Holler said.

On the flip side, Holler said volume is often a problem for companies when it comes to job applications.

“They could get 400 applicants for a single job or internship. Recruiters can be very expensive for lots of companies and are not always the most efficient. We want to put control back in the companies’ hands.”

The companies are only shown candidates that are both suitable and interested in the job.

At present the start-up is only focused on high-tech positions such as software developers, web developers, graphic designers and user experience (UX) designers.

Holler previously developed leaving-cert.net while still a secondary school student. He and two other students blogged weekly about their experiences in school in the run up to the Leaving Cert exams.

They ran the project a second year and recruited 6 new Leaving Cert students to write for the site before selling it at the end of that year. He says the site managed to become the number one Leaving Cert site during those two years.