Kim Aviv
Have you ever had that moment in the middle of your studies, when you’re in the middle of a breakdown and you ask yourself: why am I doing this? Is this really what I want to do with my life?
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Kim Aviv, noticed this phenomenon during her studies at St Andrews University. Within three weeks of starting their course, students were already fretting about securing interviews and which career path they should choose. She was astonished by the pressure students felt to get into very big companies, into a job that seemingly pays well, regardless of the fact that perhaps their personalities weren’t ideally suited for the position. The risk to students’ health has also been commented upon by Unihealth (the UK’s health and well-being messaging platform for students), which states that 82% of students in their second year of university suffer from stress and anxiety.
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For Kim Aviv, this situation ignited a spark and she decided to commence the creation of the software: Pathfinder. This software connects students to job opportunities that match their profiles and personalities. Pathfinder provides personality tests for all of their users in order to truly find a good correspondence between profiles and opportunities. Additionally, the software also provides testimonies from different people, how they achieved their goals etc.
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We were lucky enough to have an interview with Kim Aviv (the CEO and founder of Pathfinder), who gave us a little more insight into her career choices.
Why did you become an entrepreneur?
When she started in Saint Andrews she realized that there was a problem with how the students were choosing the career they wanted follow. She states that within 3 weeks of the beginning of her program, everyone was already talking about securing their interviews.
Mrs. Aviv was astonished about the pressure felt by the students to have an idea at the very start of their studies as to which field to go into, despite the fact that they didn’t even take in consideration if those fields would correspond to their personality.
The main focus of the students was to enter into an elite group of companies which placed them in a really harmful competitive mindset. However, there was a big discrepancy between what the companies offered and what would be better for them in order to truly explore their capabilities and “emancipate” themselves.
The answer for this was to create “Pathfinder”. Although she got the idea when she was still in Saint Andrews, the idea really gained momentum when she transferred to UCL.
What were the hardest challenges that you faced?
Being an entrepreneur is not an easy job to take on and every entrepreneur faces different challenges. For Mrs Aviv the hardest challenges were:
The “emotional” battle which consisted of choosing between following a great job offer or becoming an entrepreneur. The choice between the “easy way” of following a secure path or the “hard way” of following a really “insecure” career.
Another challenge was to find and convince people that your idea is worthwhile, but for her she found that it was difficult to “be the odd one out”. None of her friends followed the “risky path” , instead they all continued on to have “secure” jobs.
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Are you confident in the future of your company?
“You can be hopeful, but you can never be confident in the future, especially in start-ups, as you don’t know what the future will bring” – Kim Aviv
When we asked Mrs Aviv’s opinion whether LinkedIn and Career Fairs were good initiatives to use for employment searches, she explained that LinkedIn is an amazing networking tool, but it still remains just a network. It’s still a little too messy when it displays information .
As for Career fairs, Kim Aviv believes that it’s not a very effective tool, since hundreds of people with the same profile as you go there, so it is impossible to get a true opinion on your profile. Secondly the people who the company send to the Job fairs, are usually only juniors in the company and therefore don’t have a lot of influence in company matters.
What would be the impact of Brexit on Pathfinder?
As anything nowadays, everything in England rotates around a single concept: BREXIT. Will the UK leave the EU and on which conditions will they leave?
For Kim Aviv the future of Pathfinder in the UK, will depend on the terms of the treaties. She doesn’t believe that BREXIT will affect the start-up world too much especially in terms of London being a hub for start-ups. However, she says that a significant problem will be the requirement for VISAs, which will create issues for employment and eventually less entrepreneurs moving to London.
+ For current university students, Kim Aviv has a few hard-earned tips:
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-Qualifications are still necessary nowadays. Don’t trust the entrepreneur-like pages on Instagram that sell impossible dreams and say that there are no qualifications needed to succeed.
-It is necessary to reach out to companies and recruitment agencies, no one will come for you, you have to take the first step.
-Don’t believe people who say “all the jobs are already taken, there is no money left”. On the contrary, there is money: go for it!
-Make it a principle to not take-in negative comments and statistics as it prevents you from doing anything and make sure you know what it is you want to do as it is a ruthless road out there.