Found – Qantas AVRO Accelerator 2018
By Andrew Joyce, Co-Founder of Found Careers
found.careers
Australia’s leading mobile application for young job seekers. With over 600,000 young Australians on its platform, Found is changing the way that businesses engage with and hire young people.
Why did you apply to the program?
We thought AVRO presented a unique opportunity to engage the Qantas Group as a potential customer.
What’s it been like working with Qantas?
We really enjoyed working with Qantas through the Avro programme.
That’s not to say that it wasn’t without its challenges. But, that is to be expected when you are an early stage company dealing with a large organisation.
The critical part was the support that was provided by the internal Qantas AVRO team to help us navigate the internal workings of Qantas.
They were spectacular, not only for their ability to help us, but for their ability to empower the individual business owners within Qantas. Dealing with an early stage company is hard for corporates as well and AVRO provides great support in making sure both sides can meet in the middle.
What’s the biggest learning you’ll take away from the Slingshot program?
I think the biggest thing we gained from this experience was an appreciation of the varied challenges and motivations from different stakeholders within Qantas.
Big organisations are not homogenous things.
It’s critical that as an early stage business you understand the unique challenges and motivations of your individual customers. Solutions must be designed to meet the needs of all stakeholders involved in a partnership.
It says a great deal about Qantas’ commitment to innovation that we were able to come to an arrangement that met the requirements of all of our stakeholders.
Our experience of this at Qantas will set us up well for our engagements with major organisations into the future.
What was your favourite aspect of the program?
I could joke and say that it was the tour of the A380. Which was pretty great….
The most rewarding aspect for us has been the outcome – An agreement with Qantas HR and IT to develop a full integration and trial of our product to start hiring talent from the Found platform in February 2019.
Without the help of Dave and Betty in the AVRO team, Nicole, Annette and Allison in the HR Team and Peter and Pulkit in the IT team this wouldn’t have happened – so I should give them a shout out!
What’s next for your Startup?
The next six months for Found are going to be busy!
Not only do we have the Qantas trial coming up in February, but in the next six months we have a number of partnerships lined up to announce, so stay tuned.
We also have a very exciting training partnership to announce in 2019 that will match young people to training and jobs in supply constrained industries. This will give employers desperate for young staff access to them and give young people a pathway to a long run career.
Over 50,000 young Australians woke up this morning having not being in work or training for over a year. Getting into the workforce has never been harder for young Australians.
Found is committed to working with great organisations to help reduce the barriers to entry for young people making their way into the workforce.
So stay tuned, we have some exciting announcements in our future!
And, if you know a young person looking for work, or are a young person looking for work – DOWNLOAD THE APP!
