For most teenagers, earning a driver’s license at 16 is a milestone of independence. It grants them the liberty to drive to a friend’s house on their own time, to see a movie, and to skip the bus to school. For Connor Vukelich, at 16, it was the catalyst for launching his business.
After earning his driver’s license in high school, Vukelich was looking for a job. But he and his friends all kept running into the same problem: it was nearly impossible to find one. Most were being out-competed by senior-level applicants, applying to “ghost jobs,” and going through interviews just to get ghosted by employers.
Frustrated by this experience, Vukelich created Poppin’ Jobs, a platform that specifically targets U.S. job seekers between 16 and 24. It currently hosts a database of 100,000 potential job seekers. Vukelich built the platform as an alternative to legacy job boards, which he said tend to prioritize senior-level talent, focusing instead on a demographic that requires more specialized guidance.
“That made us think, why isn’t there a site dedicated to helping entry-level people getting into the workforce?’” Vukelich told Fortune about his conversations with friends at the time. “More specifically, Gen Z, getting us into the workplace and helping walk us through the process of doing it because it’s something we’ve never done before”
