Path 101: Matching you to a new career by way of data

March 20, 2009 | MG Siegler | Comments | |

Right now is an especially tricky time to be looking for a job. And with more layoffs in just about every industry being announced daily, it can be terrifying to even think about. So it’s an opportune time for Path 101, a career guidance service, to be launching.

Let’s be clear: This is not another job posting service. Instead, Path 101 takes an analytical approach to provide users with guidance for a career path. It does this a number of ways, with the three key areas being: A personality test, a resume analyzer and a career advice section.

Of these, the resume analyzer is the most interesting because it can take your resume (either one that you upload or have saved on a site like LinkedIn already) and parses out all of your information. Then it compares that information to the information the service has collected from the huge amount of public resumes available out there on the web. How many resumes are out there? Over 8 million, Path 101 co-founder and chief executive Charlie O’Donnell tells me.

This comparison of your information to millions of other resumes, gives you an easy-to-understand breakdown of what careers might be good options for you. That’s important because especially in times like these, you may need to break out of whatever career path you may already be on to start something new.

The service’s personality test also helps determine a career path that might be good for you, based on the the information the site has gathered from the resumes and other quizzes. The quiz requires 20 to 25 minutes to take and doesn’t require that you log-in to do it. But if you choose to sign up, you can stop the quiz at any time and save your progress.

If after those two steps, you still want more information, that’s where the career advice section comes into play. It’s a bit like a focused Yahoo Answers, where you ask a question, and other users give you responses. What’s nice, is that you can both ask and answer questions anonymously, making the process very simple (and if the service gains popularity, undoubtedly open to spam). There is also an option to easily send these questions out to Twitter or to Facebook to get an even broader group of people to answer you.

All of these services means that Path 101 has access to a lot of data. That data is valuable, and that’s the company’s strategy to eventually make money off of it. It faces competition from services like LinkedIn and Vault, and lists how it thinks it differentiates itself on its FAQ page.

O’Donnell and chief technology officer Alex Lines founded the New York-based Path 101 in 2008. The company closed an angel round of funding in February, and has raised $550,000 to date.

Path 101 Fall 2008 Opportunity V10
View more presentations from ceonyc.

Next Story: iPhone game developers rejoice at Apple’s latest update plans
Previous Story: OtherInbox opens up and attempts to simplify Gmail sorting

Bookmark and Share

Tags: ,

Photo of MG Siegler

About the Author, MG Siegler

MG Siegler writes about technology trends and new media for VentureBeat, with a focus on mobile topics, social elements and key news stories. Before that, MG wrote about technology on his blog, ParisLemon. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan where he studied film. He's previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where he did web development. He now lives in San Francisco.

  • AndreaF
    Still buggy, but very very interesting. Good job!
  • I first looked a Path101 in an episode of my video show at TheWebMix.com

    I have to say that I really thought that even though the site is still young and in Alpha, that the services were solid. I was also impressed by the fact that the personality test was spot on. As Path101 continues to develop I think we are going to see a lot of people using it
  • This is a great startup. So many people ask "What can I do with a BA in English?" (okay, that's a line from Avenue Q) and finally there's a service which tells them, using data. Data FTW!
  • Dan Wright
    I got in to hospitality sales a few years back. Hospitality is a growing field even during these tough times. I learned about hotel sales while searching on the internet and found some on-line certificate programs that were less then a couple hundred dollars. Just do a search on google for hotel sales careers.

    I now work for Hilton and make 50 plus bonus after just one year. The job is fun, I work in a nice hotel, and I enjoy going to work. Try a hotel sales job. The hours in hotel sales is m-F 8-5 or so. Not long hourse like the Front office guys.