>The way HireArt works, explained Sharef (who was my daughter’s college roommate), is that clients — from big companies like Cisco, Safeway and Airbnb, to small

>The way HireArt works, explained Sharef (who was my daughter’s college roommate), is that clients — from big companies like Cisco, Safeway and Airbnb, to small family firms — come with a job description and then HireArt designs online written and video tests relevant for that job. Then they cull through the results and offer up the most promising applicants to the company, which chooses among them. So hireart is tackling the problem from the demand side for employees by improving the signal to noise ratio of applicants, so to speak. This is only a partial solution, since at least a significant part of the problem is the skill mismatch of the more "ordinary Joes" (for lack of a better word) and the skills that are asked of them by their prospective employers. I don't think there will be a one size fits all solution for the variety of employment related issues we face today. We'll probably see many "winners" in the market that offer very distinct sets of benefits to both job seekers and employers. That makes me think that my friend's startup [1] which does focus on the more basic tier of the supply side of the job market problem, training ordinary people to gain the specific skills that specific employers want. We can't have enough hypotheses tested in this market, so I genuinely wish the best for all the current and future players in this market. [1] http://www.learnup.me/about http://www.learnup.me/about