Ann Arbor Startup: Seelio Is Connects College Students To Jobs In New Ways

Seelio, (connecting see and portfolio) is a new startup based in Ann Arbor Michigan connecting college students with employers and job recruiters. Sure there are plenty of employment connection platforms out there but Seelio is serving a few under-served segments.

First off, Seelio is serving the college student to work category which is filled with competition. One of the other big hindrances for college students competing for work is the fact that they’ve been in school the past four years and don’t have real work, resume items. Seelio solves this problem for students by opening up profile space on the service to post academic papers, computer aided designs, art projects, lesson plans, photos, videos, even pitch decks.  Employers can now see a more rounded profile of the applicant and can consider them for positions outside of “entry-level”.

“Instead of sending a stale, black-and-white resume, Seelio lets you bring yourself to life and present yourself in a more holistic way,” said co-founder Moses Lee, assistant director for student ventures at the U-M College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship to the University of Michigan News Service. “It can help college students get discovered. This is really important, especially in this tough economy, because they don’t have a lot of job experience. But many have done amazing work as a student.”

Seelio is taking an early stage Facebook approach to building scale. They rolled out the platform’s truAPP to students at the University of Michigan, exclusively in January of this year. They quickly saw 1500 students sign up and some big employers as well. Quicken Loans, Teach For America, Compuware, Under Armour and Airtime were all early adopter companies for the platform.  They have since opened up the platform to all students with a .edu email address.

One of the early student adopters that used the service, Lydia Muwanga, recently finished her master’s degree. She was able to use Seelio’s truApp to land a job as an information architect at SapientNitro.  Muwanga reported that after getting her profile posted she applied for five jobs in ten minutes. Less than 24 hours later she had heard back from three companies.

“It helps us more accurately target candidates, allowing us to differentiate between, say, human-computer interface students who love research, versus those who love wireframing,” Kati Llewellyn, creative recruiter at SapientNitro said.

For college students Seelio is a platform that merges a professional social network like LinkedIn with an actual jobs site like Monster.com, it’s quickly becoming a welcomed tool in the college students job application arsenal.

Linkage:

Check out Seelio here

Source: Univesity of Michigan News Service

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