With DiplomAdvisor, Claire Dikidjian (BBA 2015) wants to improve the employability of students and young graduates

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Claire Dikidjian and I graduated from the EDHEC International BBA programme in 2015. I turned my career towards the perfume business after completing a master’s degree at ISIPCA (Institut Supérieur International Parfums Arômes Cosmétiques). I worked for more than 2 years for a luxury perfume brand and then decided I wanted to try something else. So I completely switched areas and joined Université Côte d’Azur where I had the opportunity to build an MSc from scratch for international students (MSc Management of the Flavor and Fragrance Industry).

It was a truly enriching experience in which I had to manage fantastic and complex projects. At the same time I took over the alumni association of my alma mater (ISIPCA), which had ground to a halt, to gradually build it back up again.

Throughout these experiences, I realised what I really enjoyed: the “entrepreneurial” and independent dimensions of the projects I worked on, but also the theme of jobs for young people and businesses. So I decided to switch my career towards that path, which meant that it was a natural step for me to join the DiplomAdvisor project.

Can you tell us how your project came about?

I met Patrick Musso (the founder of DiplomAdvisor) through an old work colleague. Patrick told me about his project and we instantly hit it off. I shared his vision 100%, since I had made the same observation as him: that the various offers of education were not always visible enough, clear or adequately understood by students and businesses. Yet that is an essential element so everyone can know what direction they’re headed in ...

What a student needs is to be able to understand the tangible skills they will acquire during their studies and the professions they will unlock, and at the same time the business must be able to access the right information to improve the process of recruiting trainees, young graduates or staff on work/study schemes.

DiplomAdvisor came about to address those problems, link up these 3 key players and allow each one to move forward. Finally, the project’s originality lies in the feedback that businesses give us about students’ real-life skills acquisition. That enables us to hand on the information to the schools involved and thereby tweak the courses available to better meet the needs of the market.

Tell us how it works.

DiplomAdvisor is a search engine for higher education courses. It enables students to find their future course or job offers, and at the same time enables businesses to find the courses they should focus on to recruit young people with the profiles they need.

The courses are analysed using a benchmark of skills and professions, bringing each party clarity.

How does it work? A student looking for work visits the platform, creates an account and adds their course to their profile. Once they’ve done this, they can automatically access suitable offers. 

Similarly, a business can upload offers and directly get in touch with the students listed in their search results.

So students no longer need to send out hundreds of applications and businesses no longer need to sort through hundreds of CVs!

What’s wrong with today’s recruitment sector (for young people)? What gaps does DiplomAdvisor fill?

Studies have shown that difficult recruitment is often due to a mismatch between the applications and the employer’s expectations. In that case, the most effective method is to draw on your professional network to source candidates more likely to have the profiles sought after. But once you’ve found the school or course that will enable you to recruit the right young candidates, you tend to only recruit from that source and won’t necessarily know that there are other equally relevant courses that could also enable you to recruit the people you need.

What DiplomAdvisor makes possible is greater clarity for businesses in the offer of available courses so they can find out what professions or skills the students are trained for. With that information, a business will save considerable time in its search for the right profiles and will have the benefit of a shortlist that matches its needs.

Lastly, the originality of DiplomAdvisor is that it allows businesses, after recruiting a young candidates, to give feedback about the vocational skills students acquire in these courses. This information is not made public, but it will give course heads a better understanding of their needs in terms of skills. This in turn will allow the higher education institutes to adjust their offer to market demand.

What is your initial assessment of this entrepreneurial adventure?

DiplomAdvisor has been around for nearly 1 year, and we have just left behind our beta version. The year went very quickly and I learned a lot of things!

In particular I discovered the work methods of platform developers, with whom we are in touch on a daily basis. I also had to delve into growth hacking techniques so I could offer optimal support for the start-up’s development.

Overall the assessment is positive, as each day is different to the previous one and I’m constantly learning new things. However, everything is not necessarily straightforward and I do have moments of doubt or existential questioning but which I have now learned to manage and leave behind me so as not to be overwhelmed as soon as I face an obstacle.

What’s next for your project?

In terms of development, we will soon be in a position to allow businesses to post their own job offers. And we intend to finalise that module with businesses, who offer us feedback and tell us about their needs so we can offer a tool that matches their needs in terms of sourcing the right students.

This is a real turning point for us because the businesses we reached out to are curious and interested by the possibility of discovering new courses and potentially new profiles that might correspond to their needs!

What are your expectations from the community of alumni?

I would love to be able to chat to alumni who have set up their own business and faced challenges recruiting young candidates to get their feedback and allow them to contribute to the development of our tool so we can better address their problems.

More info:

www.diplomadvisor.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diplomadvisor/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/diplomadvisor