Side projects in the time of Coronavirus ... an update on Bashfully

During normal life finding time and energy for side projects can be tough, with the strange events caused by the Coronavirus it can be even harder. A short update on what we've done so far this year. This is part of a series about my side project Bashfully, which aims to give graduates and other new entrants to careers a seasoned professional level way of expressing themselves, through the super power of story telling. Following the core principles of being discoverable, personalised and guiding in approach.

Adding remote jobs

With more people working from home, and liking it, we thought it would be good to boost the links on our resources page to include more remote working options. This was a quick reaction to Coronavirus and the changes of the working world. It also prompted a bit of a look at the resources with some updates and tweaks.


Job application tracker

The next bit we tackled was a feature inspired by a tweet about using a spreadsheet to track job applications. We already had an experimental feature that aims to help break writers block. We are doing that by using data, which users have already entered, to let us help users find the right experience to highlight. They can then get a start in telling their story from the "Era" descriptions in their profile.


Once you have created that cover letter, we added the ability to the save that application along with the job advert URL for future reference. This had a simple drop down to track the stage the job seeker was at. 



This is still in a very early stage, but learning about how this could be developed going forward. For example, there is potentially some interesting feedback that we can give about skills matched vs stage reached. It is also one of the first feature sets that requires more regular usage around data input and the app. Although this will still be irregular and limited to periods of job hunting. It does however increase the number of sessions from individual job seekers over a period of weeks. So we have seen subtle shifts in usage stats and behaviour.

Other job trackers

During this time I have (unfortunately!) used two job board's application trackers. Totaljobs and LinkedIn. Totajobs does have a fairly good dashboard, show applications in progress and a simple three stage process indicator. Although typically jobs have more than one interview stage and possibly a screener call before that. It's also not obvious how you get to the job advert to see the spec, which when two or three jobs all have the same title isn't useful! You can add your own private notes to the application though.

LinkedIn's job tracker seems to get better and worse every time I look at it. It's handy to be able to search for roles and bookmark them for later. One thing they've made worse is that going to the new jobs tab starts off by showing search results, meaning your saved jobs or applications in progress are almost hidden.

A good point is that if the job is available through "Easy apply" then it also automatically tracks the application and gives you feedback. Until some time this week it wouldn't track external applications, but now it prompts you to confirm you completed the application and then adds it to the "applied" tab with a note of the date and time.

As an aside this is an issue with job trackers, neither site's job board handles the application for every job advertised. So, sometimes when you are bounced between job boards and are prompted to enter your email address and register it can feel a bit like a scam.

On balance I'd say that Totaljobs make a better effort of supporting job seekers as well as their customers - the recruiters. LinkedIn has some good tools around assessing which jobs you are a good fit for, but other than that there isn't as much follow up or tracking functionality for the job seeker. The process of using both in real situations, as a user, has given an extra layer of insight into what makes a slick user experience.

Problems 

For many people video calls became the main way of communicating for work and social purposes. I don’t know about you but I certainly felt the impact of “ Zoom fatigue”. 

With all the stresses and changes an amount of self-care was required. Especially with new projects like WayFare taking time and energy. I found it was important not to stress too much about losing short term momentum and take care of yourself. 

Also felt losing the lunchtime walks with Martyn, this is where we bounced ideas around. There is something about movement and getting outside an office space that gets the creative juices going. 

I guess the lesson to take away is to be easy on yourself.  We have had two feature releases and a number of security/infrastructure updates during this period. As my friend Mark said ...


Also remember that any progress is better than no progress!

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