How a start-up plans to shake up job searches

It’s not easy to find the ideal job, and companies also pay lots of money to find the right recruit. Job platforms and headhunting agencies can help, but a perfect match is still rare. Mainlander Jason Li, who worked in Britain before moving to Hong Kong in 2015, has created a new company, ImOffered, that uses artificial intelligence technology to make finding the right job or employee quicker and cheaper. The 32-year-old told Kristin Huang it was not easy to create a start-up in Hong Kong, but he wanted to change the hiring industry.

Why did you want to create a new hiring company?

Because the existing methods cannot meet modern needs: jobseekers cannot easily find an ideal position, and headhunters cannot find a good candidate from the piles of résumés. A good match cannot be made in a short time. Traditionally, jobseekers have needed to spend a great deal of time looking for job opportunities, filling in similar job application forms and uploading résumés many times to apply for different positions. A similar situation is faced by recruiters. They need to spend huge amounts of time to select a good fit from hundreds or even thousands of résumés.

I was so disappointed with the traditional way of finding a job, and wanted to change the industry. I wanted to set up a website that can really match jobseekers and companies, and save time, energy and money for both parties. It is the inefficiency that makes job searches difficult and this does not happen in Hong Kong alone. So I created an online marketplace to bridge the “information gap”.

We gathered both ready talent and employers onto our platform, and put the relevant talent in front of the employers so that employers can pick the best. At the same time, talented people are no longer constrained to researching and applying for jobs one by one, company by company. The hiring efficiency for both talent and employers is thus dramatically increased.