BLOCK71 Jakarta x Refuel: NusaTalent, an end-to-end job search solution
NusaTalent started just less than two years ago in November of 2018, and is on track to building a comprehensive job search ecosystem on their platform. The company has partnered with almost 100 universities and 500 companies all around Indonesia to provide an end-to-end job matching solution for students and jobseekers. The company onboards students whilst they are still in university, when many are seeking part-time or freelance jobs. When they enter their third year, many look for internships, and finally when they graduate, they seek full-time jobs - all of which can be found on the NusaTalent application. The startup is also part of the SKALA accelerator programme in Jakarta, and has received a seed funding from Salim Group.
Before NusaTalent, co-founder and CEO, Steven, was running a restaurant with his other co-founder. The duo then decided to sell the restaurant and used the money from its sale to bootstrap NusaTalent.
The NusaTalent founders were inspired by many people in the startup industry and startup founders, and thus decided to take the leap of faith to start their own startup. They were also passionate about changing the behaviour of job seeking in Indonesia, which is still a manual and physical process.
Understanding the problems when job seeking in Indonesia
Whilst in university, Steven was the president of the student union. He spoke to many students and to the university, and learnt that universities did not typically keep data on their graduates' job details. The universities then needed to manually call past graduates to collect these data. Hence, to solve this problem for universities, NusaTalent provides a dashboard to all partner universities, allowing them to track the employment details of their graduates.
On the end of the job poster, reaching out to universities with job promotion materials is a long and tedious process. NusaTalent also solves a problem for job posters, providing them with a platform to showcase their available jobs.
At NusaTalent, we have a mission to enable all students to have an equal opportunity to work everywhere, irregardless of the type of university they come from.
Lastly, NusaTalent also manages to disrupt the traditional job fair industries, as the application runs digital job fairs, which makes the process a lot easier for students as well.
On motivations and starting up in Indonesia
Steven is especially motivated by the NusaTalent's team ability to help job seekers find a job, and improve their livelihoods.
We are really happy when someone tells us on our social media: "Thank you NusaTalent, we got offered a job" or "Thank you NusaTalent, now I have pocket money to buy meals from my freelance job" - it is really a job to be able to help people out.
However, starting up is not easy. For entrepreneurs who want to start a startup in Indonesia, Steven recommends carrying out comprehensive customer discovery first. This includes speaking to people and potential customers on the ground in Indonesia, discovering the country's culture and understanding the economy as well.
You have to know your customer. If you don't know the people who are going to pay for your product, you will not know if the business will work out. You have to know what people need.
The immediate plan for NusaTalent is expanding to all universities in Indonesia, to allow the university students to fully hone their potential through freelance and full-time job opportunities.
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Refuel was founded to inspire aspiring entrepreneurs through the stories of startup founders. We aim to build a global community of entrepreneurs and innovators, and hustle on together.
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