Daily Endeavor Blog

Since December you’ve been able to sign up on Daily Endeavor using your Linkedin account, but I’m excited to share a new feature that takes the integration even deeper — Related People I Know.

Now when you connect with Linkedin on Daily Endeavor you can see who in your network is into what you’re into. When you pull up a Daily Endeavor job profile, first and second degree contacts in your network instantly appear.

When would this be useful? To start, it’s a whole new way to browse your professional network. Now you can leaf through jobs you may be interested in, and the related people you know automatically display inside the job guide.

If you’re doing informational interviews, it just got a whole lot easier. Let’s say you have a dream job in mind — or any type of job you happen to want to learn about — but the hard part is compiling the list of who you could meet. All you need to do is lookup a Daily Endeavor job profile, and instantly find contacts, and friends of friends, who can tell you more about the job you’re eyeing.

This is just the first of many applications in pairing up the social graph with the job graph. We’re really excited to be continue creating more. If there’s ones you want to see, let us know!

By the way, to make this mashup goodness happen our team worked closely with the team at Linkedin, using both their Profile Widget and the hot-out-of-the-oven JSAPI. The developer relations and api teams are great. Thank you gals and guys!

• 30 Places We Want to Work by @GOOD — Their criteria alone are worth checking out, if they’re either a strong fit or anti-fit for you, you’re making progress. (GOOD Magazine)

• The Eight-Word Mission Statement by Eric Hellweg — Distilling down to the core helps produce real focus, in this case: “verb, target, outcome.” (Harvard Business Review)

• Serendipity Finds You by Paul Buchheit — Don’t let “other plans” and “ego-fear” blind you to opportunity knocking. (Paul’s blog)

• 10 Types of Crappy Interviewees by Matthew Inman — Common traps to avoid, including not being ready to say what you want to do next. (The Oatmeal)

Daily Endeavor is a free online guide to jobs to help people figure out what they want to do next professionally. It’s the first step in the job search.

The website is a continually improving collection of job reviews that are collectively and publicly written by people who have had them. Of the three major stages job seekers pass through – What do I want to do next? Who do I know in that area? Who’s hiring now? – All the job boards, like CareerBuilder, The Ladders, and Monster, solve the third; LinkedIn and Facebook solve the second (though LinkedIn is growing to do a good job on more than that); and Daily Endeavor solves the first.

When most people are asked “What do you want to do next?” they respond with “What are my options?” They don’t want to know who’s hiring tomorrow, at least not as their first step. They want to understand the types of jobs that exist and which ones might be right for them.

This need, which was continually the headline in hundreds of client conversations at Endeavor Prep, is critical and unmet for nearly every student in business school, law school, graduate school, college, and increasingly high school. We originally thought this pain was primarily felt by students, but as the economy tanked and our average client age increased, we learned it’s also the central need for people switching types of work in their 30s and 40s, and even those starting their encore careers.

Because there’s no easy way to learn about 99% of the types of jobs that exist (e.g. Research in Strategy Management Consulting, or Co-Founder in Microinsurance), people do the best they can and fill the void with informational interviews. They try to get meetings with people they know who can explain a little bit about what they do.

Informational interviews are great, but of course have some real limitations if you want to learn about a lot of areas, especially if those areas are varied. Organizing one-on-one meetings is really time consuming for both people involved. And most of all, your potential to learn is limited by who you know.

We’re building the world’s largest set of do-it-yourself “informational interviews” online so everyone can quickly explore, vet and “follow” jobs and professional categories during their job search.

If you’re looking for a job, Daily Endeavor enables you to explore the universe of options even if you don’t know a lot of people. Our goal is to democratize access to careers — we want you to be able to learn about professions regardless of who you know.

There’s more to say and more to come. For now, go ahead and check out Daily Endeavor. It’s the first step to get you started in your next job.