first published in Forbes
eHarmony, Match and Tinder have all created business models around a critical matching problem: Find your soulmate—or maybe in the case of Tinder, your mate for a few hours. It’s a model familiar to investors and consumers alike. Matchmakers are both solving for a complex, human problem and generating billions in revenue.
Similar technologies have been applied to the labor market by firms like LinkedIn to transform the way employers find talent and to match individuals with jobs. And in the last three years alone, more than 250 venture-backed firms have emerged to connect talent more directly to opportunities in the workforce. These new companies are addressing the supply-demand mismatch that has employers scrambling to better identify talent, as well as the development of workplace competencies, tech skills, or informal and formal training. By some estimates, there is now a $2.9 billion-plus marketplace of funding for workforce technology in the U.S.
At the heart of this rapid innovation is a translation problem between jobseekers and would-be employers that, according to our recent analysis of more than 100 million job postings, resumes and social profiles, appears to be accelerating. Here’s why: