By Tuck Hauptfuhrer
Before we ever wrote a line of code for the jobs platform we co-founded, we started our journey on Craigslist. We messaged strangers and offered to help with their job search. One of the people we partnered with from Craigslist was a warehouse worker. He applied for a job and was rejected almost immediately. We took another pass at his resume: same experience, same qualifications, same work history — just reformatted and repackaged. He landed an interview within days, and an offer shortly after.
Nothing about his work experience had changed. What changed was whether the hiring system recognized it. His story is not unique.
What became clear is something I still believe: people don’t struggle in their job search because they lack experience or ability. They struggle because they are trying to navigate an increasingly complex hiring system without access to the right tools or support. More than 80% of companies now use automation or AI in their hiring process. The workers most affected — retail employees, frontline workers, healthcare staff, warehouse workers, hourly earners — are the ones that often don’t have access to recruiters, resume coaches, or deep professional networks to help them navigate it.
Traditional job platforms were built around employer demand. Their business models largely depend on job postings, promoted listings, recruiting subscriptions, and application volume. Business success is typically denominated in clicks and applications. But more applications don’t create better outcomes — for workers or employers. They create noise. Workers experience the consequences firsthand: application black holes, algorithmic filtering, ghost jobs, and expensive career services most people can’t afford.
Enter fintechs- or your financial app- which are structurally positioned to deliver a different type of career support thanks to their business model, data, and the nature of their relationship with workers.
Fintechs are incentivized differently than traditional job boards because long-term customer financial health is closely tied to platform engagement and value creation. More stable and growing careers can lead to more consistent product usage over time. Supporting people in finding jobs faster, accessing better opportunities, and reducing earnings volatility aligns naturally with a broader mission of improving financial well-being.
This incentive alignment matters because of what it makes possible. Instead of prioritizing sponsored listings from paying employers, a fintech platform can evaluate opportunities across the broader job market and surface the roles an individual is most likely to secure. AI is also changing the scale at which personalized career services can be delivered. For years, career support — resume writing, interview coaching, personalized job guidance — was expensive and inaccessible for many workers. Fintechs can democratize access to these types of capabilities- especially for hourly workers. With advances in AI, career support can now be delivered inside an app workers already open daily.
Fintechs also operate much closer to the economic realities of workers and are able to detect signals and patterns in earnings data that are invisible to traditional job boards and can be used to provide better real-time job support. At EarnIn, roughly one million customers lose access to their direct deposit each year because of job loss. On any given day, we can see who has experienced a reduction in hours, a job transition, or a paycheck disruption in near real time. A traditional job board doesn’t know when someone is laid off. A fintech often does before the worker has updated a profile anywhere.
Workers tend to have episodic relationships with traditional job platforms — they show up when they need work and disappear afterward. But when job support is embedded inside a financial app, the relationship becomes continuous rather than transactional. Because platforms like EarnIn already engage with workers through paycheck access, overdraft protection, credit monitoring and day-to-day financial activity, we can provide ongoing career support — not only after someone loses a job, but also by surfacing opportunities to increase earnings or improve stability while someone is still employed.
The question of “where will people find their next job?” has historically had a predictable answer: a job board. Looking forward, the more interesting answer may be the financial app already on your phone.
