Vocatio Beta Career Discovery Platform
Find your fit with our free beta!
DISCOVER YOUR TALENT. READY YOUR POTENTIAL. FIND YOUR FIT.
DISCOVER YOUR TALENT. READY YOUR POTENTIAL. FIND YOUR FIT.
Discover your talents, and how those talents fit into the work marketplace. Match with employers and opportunities to find your most fulfilling, purposeful career path.
See Katie’s “Summer of a Lifetime” with the internship she found through Vocatio!
OUR VISION
Our Vision is to bridge the vocational engagement gaps between students, employers and educators by leveraging content, assessments, and data analytics to improve the sourcing and matching of talent with employer opportunities.
"I do think that a general liberal arts education is very important, particularly in an uncertain changing world."Steve Case, Founder AOL
Vocatio is a Liberal Arts inspired media network and talent marketplace designed to:
- Engage students in meaningful career readiness through employer aligned content, talent assessments, game-based learning, social media and events;
- Promote employers and their job ads to targeted profiled students; and
- Match students with employer opportunities via a proprietary career readiness and engagement algorithm.
OUR MISSION
To inspire, empower and equip students to navigate their path through high school and college to a passionate and purposeful career of their choice.
OUR STORY
“Keepin’ It Real – The New Career-Realism for Millennials, Employers & Educators.”
As a passionate social entrepreneur and believer in the marketplace, Vocatio founder Patrick Jones has a unique perspective shaped by his own career journey and eclectic background in politics and public policy, management consulting, technology, digital marketing and entertainment.
At the core of our ethos is the belief that talent — natural aptitude and skill — is equally distributed across race, gender, geography, type of school or field of study one pursues. The question is how do we measure talent, nurture talent and then make that talent conspicuous to the marketplace.
However, in order to bridge the vocational engagement gaps between students, employers and educators, it’s going to take more than our ambitious vision and implementation of the Vocatio talent services, media network and talent marketplace.
It’s going to take a generational manifesto and call to action about how we disrupt and reimagine the experience of preparing students and then on-ramping their talents into the marketplace. The current system of “student loan debt and hope for the best” for students just won’t do.
We look forward to partnering with visionary employers, educators, non-profits, think tanks and innovators of all stripes to impact this challenge.
"The person born with a talent they are meant to use will find their greatest happiness in using it."Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE SITUATION
It has been estimated that more than $60B is spent on entry-level recruiting and onboarding with 25% or $15B of it resulting in mis-hires…
Employers Need Help to:
- Increase the scale, targeting and efficiency of entry-level talent sourcing and acquisition for growing competitive advantage
- Treat recruiting like marketing – building a thoughtful “Employer Brand” that attracts, engages and retains the best talent
- Go way beyond Facebook and LinkedIn to leverage social recruiting and big data from talent analytics to deepen talent sourcing networks, diversity and get visibility to “hidden talent”
In the U.S. more than 50% of 2015 high school and college graduates are unemployed or underemployed…
Students Need Help to:
- De-mystify how the marketplace for Talent and Job Opportunities really works
- Discover, explore and prepare for opportunities that not only exist today but are likely to exist in the future
- Engage with a more personalized career engagement experience built on their own generationally intrinsic motivations
Your Career Journey Begins Here.
RECENT VIDEOS:
OUR EVENTS
Vocatio Career Hacks at UCLA
June 1st & 2nd, 2018
+ Talent Showcase June 8th
Los Angeles, CA
IO Innovation Summit
May 29-31, 2018
Lincoln, NE
GlobalMindEd Conference
June 9-11, 2018
Denver, CO
2018 Georgia Legislative Policy Forum
September 7, 2018
Atlanta,GA
Georgia Public Policy Foundation
The Collaboratory
November 14-15, 2017
Nashville, TN
State of Opportunity in America Summit
February 5-6, 2018
Washington, D.C.
ERE Recruiting Conference: “The Future of Talent Acquisition”
April 18-20, 2017
San Diego, CA
Vocatio featured presenter as “Startup to Watch”
ASU/GSV Summit 2017
May 8-10, 2017
Salt Lake City, UT
Founder Patrick Jones presenting
Inside/Outside Innovation Summit
June 19-21, 2017
Lincoln, NE
Vocatio presenting
Consumer Electronics Show
January 5-8, 2017
Las Vegas, NV
Intern Bridge Career Services Thought Leaders Symposium
January 6, 2017
Online
CEO Patrick Jones presented
FEE Millennial Outreach Coalition
January 26-27, 2017
Bonita Springs, FL
OUR AWARDS
TESTIMONIALS
“I love it. Would love to hear more on this.…”
Chalin, College Counselor, Tome School, Elkton, MD.“I like the idea of Pandora-like personalization for what I could possibly do with my career… ”
Jamie, Senior, UCLA“It is user-friendly, students like the look, and they appreciate the possibilities/what it can do for them...”
Elke, Director Career Services, La Sierra University“It feels like a much friendlier version of LinkedIn…”
Liz, Sr., Georgia State University“It’s the type of app that all of my friends would use in a heartbeat…”
Amy, Recent Grad, Miami University“This is right on point for how we’re trying to personalize the career services experience for our students…”
Jill, Associate Dean of Students, Washington University“I like the idea that it helps employers find you based on what you love to do and what you’re really good at…”
Andrew, National Job Corp, San Diego“A unique approach of blending education, training and fun around career discovery…”
Kenn, Associate Dean of Students, UCLA
CHALINCollege Counselor, Tome School, Elkton, MD.
JAMIE,SR.UCLA
ELKEDirector Career Services, La Sierra University
LIZ, SR.Georgia State University
AMYRecent Grad, Miami University
JILLAssociate Dean of Students, Washington University
ANDREWNational Job Corp, San Diego
KENNAssociate Dean of Students, UCLA
BEHIND THE SCENES
Patrick Jones
Founder & CEOPatrick is an award-winning content producer and new media executive. For more than 15 years he has successfully delivered content strategies that have resulted in significant audience engagement and participation – both online and offline – for a wide breadth of consumer markets and diverse companies, including Coca-Cola, Coleman, Krispy Kreme, VW, General Mills, Hilton Hotels, Turner Entertainment, Hallmark Entertainment & AtomFilms (MTV Networks).
Prior to his marketing and content experience Patrick worked in management consulting with Siebel Systems (now Oracle), Diamond Technology Partners (acquired by PwC) and PricewaterhouseCoopers where he provided business and technology advisory services to emerging growth and middle market companies across multiple industries: telecommunications, entertainment and media, financial services, government services and consumer products.
Patrick received his M.B.A. from Duke University and his B.A. in Economics and minor in Political Science from Miami University. Patrick sits on the boards for the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Georgia Public Policy Foundation, and the Miami University College of Arts and Sciences.
Matt Gwin
Editor & Community ManagerMatt brings a unique blend of psychology and marketing knowledge; experience working with employers, hiring managers, and job-seekers of various ages; and writing and editing skills.
Originally from rural Ohio, Matt Gwin graduated from Princeton University in 2014 with an AB in Psychology. At Princeton, he served as managing editor and head writer of The Princeton Tiger humor magazine, as well as the communications director for Princeton Faith and Action. He was a member of the Lobster Club improv comedy troupe, Umqombothi a cappella group, Princeton club baseball team, and was an Outdoor Action freshman orientation trip leader.
For his undergraduate thesis, he spent the better part of a year running a research/marketing study in rural Kenya aimed at increasing participation in a government-subsidized homebuilding program.
After graduation, he received a Princeton Project 55 fellowship to work for the North Lawndale Employment Network, a nonprofit on Chicago’s west side. There, he trained and coached formerly incarcerated individuals in job-related skills, worked with employer partners to make successful hires, advocated for ex-offender-friendly hiring practices, and provided management support for the award-winning social enterprise Sweet Beginnings.