Apna | Onboarding Deep Dive by Naman Muley

Apna is a job portal for grey-blue collar workers

What is Apna?

Apna was the fastest unicorn in India in 2021

Apna is a job portal aimed specifically at the grey/blue collar jobs.

500M strong India's informal sector is looked at as untapped potential. Apna put together a good team and investor backing to innovate in the job industry.

Their USP is their ability to bring the grey/blue collar workers to a job portal effectively. Now they have expanded into becoming a social network as well.

The Ideal ICP - Who is signing up?

The ideal ICP is either looking to get hired or hire from Apna

	ICP1 - Get Hired	ICP2 - Hire
Age	25-30	35-40
Gender	Any	Any
Location	Tier1 suburb, Tier2 city	Tier2 city
Marital Status	Married	Married
Goals	Find a new job with > 20% salary rise	Hire an sales / CRM / operations executive within 3 days
Company / Industry	Any	non-IT sectors: Manufacturing, Pharma, Textiles, Cement
Current Job Role	Sales / Operations executive	Managing Director / HR head
Current Company Size	10k - 50k	10-50 (full time) + 50 contract
Employment Need type	Full Time	Part-time (3/4 times a year) Full-time less often (once a year)
Where do they spend Money?	Work place, local eateries, social media
Tech savvy	High	High
Willingness to Pay	Low	Moderate

What: Are they doing on Apna app

What	ICP1	ICP2
Exploration	Build a basic profile Browse positions, potential salaries, companies, locations	Create a company profile Creates a job. Adds details conservatively
Consideration	Apply to a few jobs and check how quickly get calls Add a resume, add more skills Get added to communities that enrich	Browse through some applied candidates Notice the quality & quantity of people / resumes Provide credentials to HR head for follow-ups Browses through pricing structure
Purchase	None	Pays for job promotion. Gets 5-7 interviews in 48h
Habit Formed	Usually receive 8-10 calls in a week Leads to 5+ interviews under 10 days	Able to call previous interviewers through history Affordable job promotions

Why are they hiring Apna: JTBD

ICP1 - Get Hired from Apna
Financial Goal - I want to get a higher salary job, preferably with more job convenience

While this may seem like a financial goal, there is also a secondary functional goal to get a job which is not as stressful as their current one.

ICP2 - Hire from Apna

Functional Goal - I want to find a reliable, talented pool of people to hire from. I usually have to hire twice or thrice a year.

Financial Goal - Find the right people<>cost fit at regular intervals since attrition is usually high in my company for blue/grey collar workers

The automation of hiring for blue collar workers is the ultimate convenience of an SMB owner since attrition is high and loyalty is low.

Validating JTBD

ICP2-Darshil Dodhiya | 36M|SMBOwner

Q: Have you ever used any other app / resource to hire? How have you been hiring till now?

A: Either through referrals, references from other vendor companies.

Q: How did you find Apna in comparison?
A: It was super fast, response came in within hours.

Q: How did you find onboarding flow?
A: Did not find specific post that I wanted. For e.g. welding automation. I had to select welding, automation and machine operator. Used the description.

Q: Any challenges?
A: No challenges. But took some time to get the JD right. I might not even now had it right in 2 days. Some pre-filled options will have helped.

Q: How long did it take you to finish the onboarding flow
A: 10 minutes

Q: Did the process give you delight moments?
A: No delight moments, but pleasant experience overall

Q: Will you recommend this app?
A: My recommendation bar is high. I will only recommend after I get 5 hires who ended up performing well. Our employees last long in the company, often generationally.

Q: Thoughts on pricing?
A: Pricing was very decent. Low infact. Will allow me to try multiple times.

Onboarding Teardown

ICP1 - Get Hired

Overall Onboarding Score: 7.5/10

Apna - GetHired(ICP1) - OnboardingTeardown.pdf

Engaging process and completion of flow till activation achieved within 3 mins.
Missed out on optimizations in places.
Push notifications about job updates will keep user engaged in 1st week.
Habit formation levers included early.

ICP2 - Hire

Apna - Hire(ICP2) - OnboardingTeardown.pdf

Onboarding flow achieved (for the super primed ICP2) within 5 mins.
Some levers of automation achieved successfully as a part of onboarding
Increasing retention by clearing pathways for candidates to reach out to companies quickly
Missed out on opportunities to show good candidates early on

Activation Metrics

ICP1 - Apply for 7 jobs within 48h

A candidate looking for a job is happy to apply for 7 jobs even if not all of them convert. Their Aha moment comes not just from applying but also being part of communities and forming connects

ICP1 - Join 5 communities and have 10 profile views in 7 days

A candidate passively looking will be glad to find a community here to learn from and see that his profile is being viewed regularly.

ICP2 - Atleast 2 Employer-Candidate-Connect (ECC) in first 2 days

An SMB owner / HR head is looking to solve functional goals and will be delighted to see connects happen reliably according to their choice in onboarding.

ICP2 - 1+ hires within 2 hiring seasons

An SMB Owner is willing to give 2 hiring season chances cause the cost is relatively cheap. But then their specifications have to be met with regards to skill and reliable honest people.
If the SMB owners gets a full time hire from Apna twice, they will be hooked on the platform for long term and will present repeat sales