Market for the Senior Job Seeker

Now we are in the phase of analyzing the market to position the product. The article “Market Segmentation, Target market Selection, and Positioning” provides basic notion on the subject.

The reading help me further refine my venture concept.

Market segmentation

For my venture, the market is segmented based on both benefit sought by customer and common characteristics. In my venture, this is possible as it is clear the benefits the customers are seeking and at the same time, it is specifically for people of age over 65.

• Benefit the customers seek. Our customers are expecting to find the most appropriate job for him/her considering his age.
• Segment the market, develop prototypical customer profiles. Our customer base at one side will be mostly retired people over 65 with regular or sporadic access to internet. These people have had previously job, and now are highly experienced in all kinds of domains. At the other side of our customer base will be organizations that requires labor. The organization can be private companies as well as government or non-profit organization.
• Find the observable variables most likely to discriminate among the benefit segments. People of age over 65 (baby boomers). Also high profile or large organizations, such as multinationals, government offices, etc.

Target Market Selection

Given the characteristics of the service, target market, I believe, is straight forward. An important factor would be the narrowing of the market selection to a specific area. For the purpose I have conducted a research of baby boomers concentration by state. It turns out that Maine and other states in northern east part of the country satisfy this criterion.

Positioning

The article game me a good starting strategy for the positioning: define the positioning statement.

Our Senior Force site is the most effective job connecting site for senior citizens among all job seeking sites because it focuses on senior citizens unique characteristics and takes advantage of social networking.

Answering the three key questions

• Who are the customers?
  The main customers are the senior citizens over 65.
• What is the set of needs the product fulfills?
  The service will facilitate retired people to find appropriate jobs.
• Why is the product the best option to satisfy those needs?
  Our site provides job indexing, categorizing and querying focused for people with more than 35 years of experience. It also provides user clustering and networking for enhanced experience. Furthermore usability features for senior people making it easier for them to use

To identify the differentiator, I identified the possible competitors. There are two types of competitors: the generic job market site as monster.com, and the senior job market site such as www.seniorjobbank.org. The former is too generic and the information classification is not suited for senior job seekers. The latter is focused on senior, but the functionalities are primitive.

Our service, as previously mentioned will have enhanced functionalities for job seeker/poster. Some of the functionalities are automatic job clustering by criteria, active notification, and networking among users. It will also provide better usability for senior people.

- Young-Suk