His Final Year Project Became His Enterprise
Even when he was still a student, entrepreneur Raniel Lee always had a plan. Raniel pursued his Diploma in Business Informatics (DBI) at NYP because he wanted to learn more about creating a profitable business. When he was still a student in NYP, Raniel set up his first business, InspireARTS LLP. Recently, he established his second business, Jobook, which was first conceptualised as a Final Year Project in NYP (in 2012).
�Jobook was created to match job-seekers directly to employers, cutting out the difficulties of previous experiences I had,� Raniel said.
�The idea started when a group of friends and I went to find holiday jobs by going through an agency. We found out that the agency takes part of our income for every hour we work.�
Thinking back on the difficulties on finding holiday jobs or part-time jobs, Raniel understood that it had always been difficult for students to earn that bit of extra money, and going through interview after interview for a part-time job was very time consuming, so he began to think that there must be an easier way.
�The idea of sending resumes to the agency, to get a call, only to go through the same process of papers and interviews again is tedious,� Raniel explained.
Incorporating his love for technology, Raniel developed Jobook, a career development platform that is based on job seekers� preferences and availability. Jobook keeps track of when job seekers are free, and automatically matches them to employers who need candidates during that specific period of time.
Raniel graduated in 2013 and then served his National Service (NS) for two years. It was during his NS where he met his two partners - Daryl Sim Kwan Yee and Vignesh Manu - who would make his vision into reality. Coincidentally, they all discovered that they were alumni of NYP!
The two years inside NS gave them more than enough time to plan, and figure out how to put Raniel�s plan into action. It was there where they laid the foundation of his idea, and subsequently created an enterprise that is feasible and profitable today.
Before they completed their NS, the trio came to NYP to apply for NEST (NYP Entrepreneurship Startup) incubation space, which provided students and graduates with basic equipment and resources to start-up a company.
Not everything falls easily into place even after two-years of planning. The trio faced difficulties such as sourcing for manpower, and in the development of Jobook�s User Interface (UI), working on making it easily accessible to mobile devices, in order to attract more candidates to use the platform.
Raniel said: �We also had to engage another web-developer to establish a web-presence for Jobook as the previous one did not work out.�
�Current difficulties include linking up our clients to relevant jobs, as well as individual preferences, but we are able to do as best as we can. For example, we had 20 jobs today, at the end of the day, we had 5 left!� Raniel exclaimed.
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| Raniel (front row) in dark blue jacket with his team |
It looks like Jobook is not about to rest on its laurels, as the owners look to better their achievements. Their dreams are big, and Jobook looks like it will further evolve. The future of Jobook looks promising, and exciting.
Watch Raniel explain how Jobook operates:
By Nasruddin Islam Bin Ramli, Diploma in Electronics, Computer & Communications Engineering
A Diploma in Electronics, Computer and Communications Engineering student, Nas hopes to be able to achieve his dream and make little changes that would benefit the world. But he also understands that life has its curve-balls, so he would just be happy being able to improve himself as a person and a human-being by learning something new every day, regardless of it being inside or outside the classroom.
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