How Huzzle is Leading the Future of Student Recruitment

huzzle letters

Only 1 in 4 job applications ever get seen by an actual human being. The rest are filtered out by heartless algorithms that filter by keywords. Most students’ meticulously drafted resumes are rather, simply converted into zeros and ones and recruiters never see the humans behind them. Manuja Jayawardana, a student who recently launched a podcast about this very problem says he applied to 121 internships, got 4 interviews, and only one offer.

The whole process of finding Grad Jobs and Internships is stressful for students of all backgrounds, and has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Students have to spend days on end searching on job boards for the positions to apply to before diligently collecting them on a spreadsheet, preparing their application with a lot of care, and keeping track of their applications – all while juggling home and school work, exams, essays and assignments. “This extremely stressful process is made much worse when those rejection emails start rolling in” says Charlie, a UCL student.

 

 

Trying to solve this problem is London-based Huzzle; a company founded by a few students who strived to solve their peers’ problems. “Every time a student gets a rejection email in their inbox, their heart sinks, and they feel the pain for the whole day. By matching students directly to the jobs that fit their skills and background, we help them get accepted more quickly.” says Parham, the founder – who recently graduated from UCL. Huzzle has been working on their matching algorithm, fine-tweaking it to ensure only the best matches are made between students and vacancies, and already have a beta version of their app available.

In tandem with their product, they have launched the Huzzle Love Letters initiative, where they will re-write rejection letters sent by students into funny emails that open with tidbits such as “Dear Candidate no. 3218”, and sign off with “An Automated Response System”. One really funny example sent to Alicia, a Westminster student after she got rejected from an internship at a big bank says “Unfortunately, we have concluded that you are simply too awesome for our organisation, which is incredibly dull and boring. Please do not be disheartened, your application suggests that you will be a great success as long as you don’t work for a boring company like ours.”

The team have already received a lot of interest from students, and are struggling to keep up with the demand for love letters. “Some suggested we automate the letters, but that would defeat the purpose. The human touch is what counts here, each love letter needs to be unique, just as each student is unique.” says Yasin, who is leading the initiative at Huzzle.

While Huzzle continues to work on solving the recruitment problem, students can send their own rejection letters to [email protected] in order to have a laugh, and take a breath, before diving back into the job search.