It’s Friday and I’m getting ready to kick back and watch my favorite show, Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’m just settling into my Chick-fil-A when I get a call from my uncle asking for help updating his resume. I cringe at the thought of redoing a resume, thinking I’d much rather do something less challenging like win an Olympic medal or run for President, but Uncle Chip is my favorite so I reluctantly agree. After all, how hard can updating a resume and creating a LinkedIn profile be for a Virginia Commonwealth University grad anyway?

I spent two hours tediously updating Uncle Chip’s resume and creating a LinkedIn profile while my Chic-fil-A got cold and I missed critical pieces of Larry David chastising everyone. After sending the resume out to a number of job sources within hours, the dreaded, “thanks but no thanks” emails started rolling in. But why? I’m well-educated in crafting resumes, but what if this wasn’t a person reading this resume but a machine. After this minor set-back, my uncle called me and said, “Vernon, I know if I can get in the door somehow and they could see my passion, drive, and skills instead of my resume, I could get these jobs.” Now this was one of those light bulb moments like those in the movies and Clinchr was born.

That night I began to create mock-ups of an application that would allow candidates to create an elevator pitch video to sell themselves to potential job recruiters while also showcasing their skills, passions and interests. We wanted to allow users to show off their creativity and well-honed social networking skills to clinch the career of their dreams. I literally did this in one night but I knew we needed more to make this beneficial for not only candidates but recruiters as well. Clinchr could balance the scales and be the first network that truly supports the goals of recruiters and millennials. I pitched it to my co-founder, Phil, the next day and he recommended we create a repository feature to allow recruiters to create job banks and directly recruit users by viewing skills and videos all in one place. Once a candidate accepted the invite from one of these “talent warehouses,” their phone number is displayed to make a personal connection.

We took this idea and ran with it, putting all of our money and annual bonuses into the application, even my money for the Adidas Yeezy’s I desperately wanted. We completed development six months later. This is the part where we ask ourselves if our resumes are really doing the trick. Maybe your resume is buried in a stack of candidates who look strikingly similar on paper despite their vast range of creative abilities, passions and interests. Maybe your resume is being filtered out by machine screening because it doesn’t match enough database keywords. Hey, maybe your resume really does suck. Clinchr aims to change the mindset of recruiters and connect candidates with dream jobs by protesting the resume with profiles that put people first.

Oh, and we set Uncle Chip up with a Clinchr profile and he got a job.

Clinchr

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