Marshall alumnus founds company to ease job search
(Photo courtesy of Nathan Candaner)
When Nathan Candaner was a sophomore in the Marshall School of Business, he found searching for internships challenging.
Candaner, now a 24-year-old alumnus, realized that it didn’t need to be so difficult. He could simplify the process and help other students easily find jobs and new opportunities and believed that he could consolidate websites and online job boards with open listings so students are able to better understand the job market.
This led to the creation of his new company JobzMall in 2018, an interactive online platform with verified job postings where those seeking employment are able to pursue different career opportunities related to government, business, technology, education and other industries.
“Basically, after you use these traditional job boards and you go to ZipRecruiter, you go to Indeed, you type in job listings, you’re greeted with a bunch of texts, so many different job postings,” Candaner said. “You click on one and go to another website, most of them have expired links. It’s just a horrible process.”
Sarika Joshi, head of the success division, said JobzMall focuses on making the job search process more humanistic.
“We do work with Fortune 500 companies, we do work with startups, we are working with the education industry like colleges,” Joshi said.
During his time at USC and after graduation, Candaner researched what employers go through during a candidate hiring process and realized they also struggled with finding the right employees. After noticing how many opportunities may be missed on both ends of the job search, he was inspired to create JobzMall.
Candaner said the company is growing and he hopes the website is able to benefit USC students who may be confused and stressed about the job search.
“What we primarily do with our groups, partnerships and all, we have a dedicated person just for colleges, and predominantly in California,” Joshi said. ”We have almost 1,000 organizations out there and 300,000 users … It is essential that users actually know who is hiring, how to connect career options.”
Candaner said he was inspired by his professor Greg Autry, who teaches technology entrepreneurship in the Marshall School. Candaner hopes that his work can inspire other people to find their passions and create their own path.
“Students should believe in themselves,” Candaner said. “I would definitely preach entrepreneurship. One of the reasons why I had the [inspiration] was that I had a great entrepreneurship class.”
Another one of Candaner’s favorite professors was Selahattin Imrohoroglu, who teaches finance and business economics. Imrohoroglu believes that Cardaner’s journey with JobzMall can help other students who also hope to pursue entrepreneurship.
“He would be a tremendous example [of a] success story to entrepreneurs or who want to be entrepreneurs in [the Marshall School] … I would like to have him talk to my students and kind of tell his story and how it came about. I think this would be a very good connections for Trojans.”