There’s a lot I like about career discovery startup Path 101’s intended trajectory. As I wrote last week, the company is “tackling 3 million+ publicly posted resumes on the web (and any others the company can get its hands on) and working on organizing that information.” Such work could hold exceptional value.
As a stats junkie, I’ll be personally interested in playing with the data, some albeit bizarre hint of which is offered to me every year by my alma mater. It’s pretty intriguing stuff. Consider that the most lucrative major at Princeton last year turned out to be philosophy. Granted, only four graduating seniors in the department recorded their contracted salaries but the average was $71,250! Despite the small sample size, that’s a potent argument for the materialist intellectual to justify a liberal arts degree. And though perhaps unsurprising to those who’ve witnessed the post-Princeton mass migration to New York City, it’s nevertheless startling to see that 43% of the school’s seniors who graduated with jobs went into the financial services industry.
These are the facts, but there’s more to career discovery and decision making than average salaries and sector choices. Qualitative information should play a role, and I’m glad to see Path 101 thinking about ways it might partner with LinkedIn to mutually add value. Consider the following “old world” example. Prior to choosing a college, my brother e-mailed a large number of students at the two schools he was considering and asked for responses to a series of questions he deemed important decision making factors. The replies he received added significantly to his on-campus visits and the data he was gleaning from reference books. LinkedIn automates this kind of polling process for the work world utilizing networks. More obviously, of course, the company enables the building of such networks. It doesn’t help to understand your choices if you don’t have options. And on LinkedIn’s behalf, Path 101 presumably offers entree into the youngest slice of LinkedIn’s target market, which potentially holds the highest lifetime value in subscription terms.
I hope Path 101 gets in the door. There’s real value for both sides. And some interesting alternative partnerships for both parties, I’m sure. I’d love to see comments on such alternatives or agreement/dissension over the LinkedIn possibilities. Isn’t such feedback the very point of an “anti-stealth” startup strategy?
Full disclosure: I’m friends with Charlie, Path 101’s founding CEO; it’s perhaps no coincidence that I see eye-to-eye with him on directional thinking (after all, we’ve both studied the landscape as institutional investors). Nevertheless, I’ve written before, and independently, about the value of these kinds of services. If you’re a young professional, take a peek. Then go cheer Charlie on.
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Graphic credit: LinkedIn MerlinWizard, originally uploaded by 4_EveR_YounG
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