Ascend Indiana, a nascent initiative to address the talent gap in the Hoosier state is ramping up its operations. The group is an offshoot of the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership, has raised $9 million so far to support its work and is “partnering with Indiana companies to create specific talent pipelines to fill shortages in critical industries” according to IBJ.com.
Ascend has invested in cloud-based platform that combines technology and human interaction in a job-matching service. Job matching sites like this are essentially just the next generation of job board technology. Just because you can match a candidate to a job doesn’t mean they are interested or fully qualified. Below is a quick tour of the site which can be found here.
I do like the fact they are targeting college kids as they come out of school. But like any marketplace this will take time and effort to build and maintain a statewide network like this. Certainly lots of other sites vying to capture new students. They are going to need a long time horizon to really make this work.
