Lithuanian Startup: GigBasket Moves To US To Launch Job Pinning Site INTERVIEW

The two Lithuanian co-founders behind startup GigBasket have moved to the United States to launch their job “pinning” platform. GigBasket allows users to save job openings to a users GigBasket account from virtually any site in the world.

If you’re familiar with Pinterest and the “pinning” concept of being able to go to any website and “pin” something which then posts that something to Pinterest, then you will automatically understand how GigBasket does the same thing for jobs.

The platform works in two different ways you can add a job manually that you may have seen online, or you can add the bookmarklet to your browser by simply dragging it to your bookmarks bar and then hit the GigBasket button anytime you see a job you find worthy of applying for.

GigBasket allows you to create your own profile after logging in using your linked in account. GigBasket also pulls through data from your LinkedIn account to make keywords for your job search.

Rounding out the simple, but feature packed site are an interview calendar and a dashboard that shows you what jobs you’re “tracking” and what jobs you’ve “applied to”. It makes it extremely easy to remove a job if you’ve either lost interest or the job has been filled.

We got a chance to speak with Eddy Balcikonis, co-founder and CEO of GigBasket in the interview below. He tells us about the GigBasket platform and why he and his co-founder Eugene, moved to America to launch this very useful startup.




What is GigBasket?

GigBasket is your personal online basket for job opportunities. You can save interesting job openings to GigBasket with a single click from virtually anywhere on the web, track application progress and interviews – the whole deal. The whole experience is kinda like shopping for jobs, but doing it through job postings scattered all over whole web.

Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?

We are two guys from Lithuania (North East Europe) with two different but complementing backgrounds.

Eugene is GigBasket’s initial founder, developer and designer of the whole thing. Previously he worked as a software engineer on a number of various projects, starting from small scale websites to large enterprise systems. He’s familiar with a number of various platforms and overall is a brilliant software engineer. He can also do some design as a bonus, which is an invaluable secondary skill to have as an engineer when building consumer centered products.

I am Eddy – GigBasket’s co-founder, CEO and hustler. I’m responsible for all the communication, sales, marketing, business development and logistics. I studied management and economics and have a lot of experience doing various sales and marketing jobs in banking, retail and NGO sectors. Because of my relentless passion for travel, during my short life I have already lived and worked in USA, UK, Scotland, Sweden, Russia and India.

What problem does GigBasket solve?

GigBasket helps people organize and track job opportunities that they decide to pursue. No more important information scattered through email, notes and various online platforms – your job opportunities will always be neatly and securely organized in your GigBasket account. Ultimately we want to solve a much larger problem of actually finding a proper fit for a job seeker, but we’re starting small. We believe that you have to start small to build something great.

What is your secret sauce?

With GigBasket we’re taking a very fresh and critical look at how people currently manage their job search. This is an area where, frankly speaking, haven’t been any real innovation since LinkedIn. Most of the focus was shifted towards serving employers and recruiters needs while job seekers were considered more like a product than a customer.

We want to change that. And we want to do it by taking a methodical approach on figuring out the real needs of job seekers. We are meeting them, learning what frustrates them and try to eliminate those. So I would say our main difference is that we believe that it’s about people first and companies later. Meaning that to solve the recruitment problem you have to start with job seekers.

What’s one lesson you’ve learned in the startup process?

Go lean or go home. There is no other sensible way to build startups. Read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries and get on with it. Don’t waste your time building something nobody wants – your time is simply too valuable.

What’s next for GigBasket?

Right now we are focusing on getting the most out of Monthly Ventures startup accelerator. We have lots and lots of different ideas in the pipeline that need testing and validation.
One of those ideas that we’re currently working on is job suggestions for job seekers. We want to go beyond organizing job search to actually helping people discover and land jobs.
Linkage:
Check out the easy to use GigBasket for yourself here at GigBasket.com
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