Марія Бровінська Startup 28 February 2025, 09:00

“I realized that I wanted to help my daughter make the process of choosing a profession easier.” A team of Ukrainian startups has created an AI agent that helps young people choose their future profession. How Profitrol from JobAtlas works

Creative Vyacheslav Fokin, founder and CEO of JobAtlas, created the EdTech startup JobAtlas and AI solutions to help his 14-year-old daughter decide on her future profession. He told dev.ua how the AI agent «Profitrol» works, and what plans the startup has for developing the career market for young people and beyond.

The desire to help my daughter

Vyacheslav Fokin says that during his career he changed 25 different positions in radically different areas. «It was a process of finding myself and an activity that would allow me to fully realize myself,» he admits. His daughter is now 14 years old. And at this age, says Vyacheslav, the question of choosing a profession is not yet acute, but conversations about it are already beginning.

«Once, we were talking to her about what she wanted to do and what she was going to do after graduating from school. My daughter didn’t have a clear idea of what kind of activity she wanted to choose for herself. I realized that I wanted to help her make the choice process easier. That’s when I started working on JobAtlas,» says the startuper.

What is JobAtlas?

JobAtlas builds technology products related to career planning and development. JobAtlas is a young company that has been around for less than a year. But during this time we have already received several awards: we became winners of the Techstars Startup Weekend Kyiv competition, AI House Bootcamp prizewinners for the use of AI technologies, and participants in the Finnish-Ukrainian EdTech project program, which invited us to Slush, one of the largest startup conferences in the world.

At the beginning of implementing his idea, Vyacheslav worked alone for several months — conducting market research, identifying audience needs, and writing the platform prototype code (using ChatGPT).

«Gradually, I became confident that the idea had potential, because the problem was relevant to millions of people. Then I started to assemble a team,» he says.

The JobAtlas team currently consists of 10 people. Most of them are the product team, including developers, ML engineers, and data analysts. «We are betting big on technology and data,» says the startuper.

The first pancake is not for nothing

The company already has a product that helps people find their dream job. In 2024, JobAtlas created an online career planning platform for young people called Profitrol. «Its goal is to help young people choose their path of professional and educational development and find their first job,» says Vyacheslav.

The peculiarity of the platform is that users are provided with activity recommendations based not only on a person’s interests and abilities, as is done in classical career guidance methods.

The algorithm uses a data-driven approach, which involves a thorough analysis of macroeconomic indicators, competition for various vacancies, and other quantitative data to provide users with an understanding of the demand for professions in the market and the likelihood of finding a job in a particular specialty.

«Thanks to this, we can recommend professions that not only resonate with a person’s individual interests, but also correspond to labor market trends,» says Fokin.

He adds: initially the project had the same name as the company, JobAtlas. But before launching the platform, the developers realized that it was too serious for young people. Then the name «Profitrol» appeared, and with it a funny character — a troll who considers himself a pro in everything.

Ambition — to close all niches

«Profitrol» is just one of JobAtlas' products. According to Vyacheslav, the problem of career planning concerns millions of people who are at different stages of their professional path. The target audience of the startup is wide: on the one hand, these are high school students who are making their first choice of profession, as well as students. On the other hand, switchers. After all, when a person has been working in a particular field for many years, there often comes a time when changes are needed.

«This is exactly what happened to me — I worked in advertising agencies for almost 10 years, where I rose to the position of creative director. I had the opportunity to independently build a team, establish work processes, and as a bonus — every year I went to Cannes, where the world’s largest advertising festival is held. But at some point I realized that I had nowhere to grow in the advertising field, and that’s when I became a switcher — I moved to the field of technological startups,» says Vyacheslav.

In addition, Fokin adds, in Ukraine in the near future the number of another category of people will dramatically increase — veterans and people with disabilities, for whom the issue of developing their career will also be very relevant. The JobAtlas team has already started researching the issues of veterans to understand what exactly we can do for them.

In addition, the team is simultaneously developing products aimed at meeting the needs of companies and educational institutions. For example, according to Fokin, JobAtlas is in talks with several universities and private schools that are interested in using the startup’s technology in their career centers, which should help students make an informed choice of profession.

«It is worth noting that in Ukraine, unfortunately, universities are not ready to pay for such solutions. We have communicated with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, but we cannot expect financial support from them. Therefore, in this case, in terms of monetization, we are focusing on universities in EU countries,» Fokin argues.

JobAtlas also plans to help companies with employee recruitment, because the technology used by the company can qualitatively pre-screen candidates and assess their personal motivations and behavior patterns for compliance with the company’s culture.

«By using our technology to address the different needs of diverse audience segments, we work at the intersection of EdTech and HR Tech,» says the startuper.

Interestingly, the company is currently bootstrapping — it is developing using its own funds and grants. More than $50,000 has already been spent on developing the technology. «This was funded by the founder’s personal funds and a grant from the European Innovation Council as part of the Seeds of Bravery program,» Fokin clarifies.

Technological secrets

The basis of JobAtlas technology is a recommendation system based on its own machine learning model, says Vyacheslav.

«Algorithms and frameworks for building recommendation models have existed for decades. Traditional methods for building such systems usually involve the use of complex algorithms that analyze large amounts of data on user behavior. However, modern machine learning technologies based on Large Language Models have allowed us to significantly speed up the system development process and its efficiency. Thanks to this, we were able to quickly launch MVPs and test hypotheses on real users,» the specialist said.

On the other hand, startups have put a lot of effort into making a quality product in terms of user experience (UX).

«We are entering the territory of personality type tests and character assessments,» says Vyacheslav.

The most popular of them, the Holland test or MBTI, uses a huge questionnaire with almost a hundred questions, for which you have to choose one of the proposed answers. This form of testing, says the startuper, is morally outdated and often causes reluctance to take such tests. Therefore, the team decided to radically rethink the user interface.

«On our platform, we obtain information about a person during a regular chat dialogue, where there are no standard questions. The user can talk about their hobbies, or favorite movies, or what brings positive emotions in life,» Fokin noted.

The AI agent Profitrol, developed by the team, asks clarifying questions, analyzing what information it lacks to create a psychological portrait of a person. All this happens in a casual dialogue, which includes jokes and compliments that encourage the user.

In addition, the company has taken a very careful approach to implementing gamification on the platform. «We even introduced our own virtual currency — trolls, which can be obtained for completing daily tasks and various activities on the site. Then trolls can be exchanged for useful trifles or for an individual session with a career planning specialist,» Vyacheslav shares motivational secrets for users.

Big plans

With its solutions, JobAtlas is able to make a significant contribution to the reconstruction of Ukraine and its economic development, the startup founder believes.

«The Ministry of Economy published statistics that the country lacks 4.5 million workers. At the same time, we have a fairly high unemployment rate. That is, on the one hand, companies cannot fill vacancies, and on the other, people cannot find work. This happens because people cannot understand in which areas they can realize themselves and where there is demand and their involvement,» says Vyacheslav.

By helping people find career paths that meet the needs of the labor market and improving the match between the skills of job seekers and the needs of employers, the JobAtlas team can reduce the unemployment rate in the country and help companies find employees, the startup founder is convinced.

The main difficulty for a startup today, he says, is finding a balance between offering its platform for free, fulfilling a social mission and helping Ukraine rebuild its economy, and making a profitable business project. Initially, the startups planned to monetize at the expense of individual users. But gradually they realized that this was not entirely ethical.

«Our mission is to give every person the opportunity to fully realize themselves by finding the ideal field of activity for themselves. By making the product paid for by users, we limit access to it for the audience, which means we contradict our vision,» the specialist explains.

That is why the team went the way of attracting grants. «However, due to funding restrictions from the US, it is not yet clear how far this path can be continued. At the end of 2024, we applied for several USAID tenders, and at the time when US funding was frozen, our applications were just under consideration. Therefore, now we are actively focusing on entering the EU market and monetizing through the B2B model,» Vyacheslav summarizes.

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