We're now known as @SomewhereHQ so follow us over there! And check out SomewhereHQ.com for the first hints of what's coming soon :).

— Vocatr (@vocatr) December 13, 2011

Photo: Our lovely hoop-pivoting friend Marawa the Amazing!

We've been busy collecting some wonderful advice as part of our experiment in building a library of vocational advice from people in the know (share yours!).

Of late we've got some particularly exceptional advice from the design world. You'll see two examples below.

They're both compelling because they give a real insight into the day-to-day activities of the job as well as providing some punchy, non-cliched advice on things you should be doing to get started... now.

(click the links to read them properly)

Thanks guys for contributing your valuable advice!

We're just experimenting with ways to make this advice discoverable for people starting out, so stay tuned.

1. What's your name? Where are you from? What did you study?

Berlin is a dynamic,international and young city. That's why I chose to come here.

1. What's your name? Where are you from? What did you study?

My name is Josh Jeffries and I'm from England. I was brought up in Leeds and studied Business Management in Newcastle.

2. What did you want to be 'when you grew up'?

I've always wanted to be a musician, I've played the drums since the age of 7 and thats always been the 'dream' for me.  

3. How did you try to answer the question 'what on earth should I do?' (and what was the experience like)

This question probably arose when I was looking for a degree to study. My strongest subject at school was Business Studies so I decided that it would be the logical career choice. I also took advice from friends and family on what I should study and we concluded that it would probably be a good idea to take Business as it kept my options open being such a broad subject. Once I graduated I decided that I really needed to build some experience and continue my learning about business and the different opportunities that could present themselves. So, my first stop was a small company in a town called Huddersfield. Here I worked as a marketing assistant learning more and putting skills I had learnt at Uni into practice. After 3 months of this I moved down to London for another internship, this one lasted around 8months and I just tried to continue my learning and development to ensure I was moving in the right direction. Following this my girlfriend and I decided we needed a change, and decided that Berlin would be that change. 

4. What attracted you to Vocatr?

Aside from being in Berlin, I saw Vocatr as a great opportunity for me to work in a young exciting startup. I thought the idea and concept of Vocatr was brilliant as there really is a problem for graduates to identitfy what career path would suit them best. With so many of my friends being in that boat, I thought if I could be part of developing a solution to their, and so many other peoples problems regarding a career path then it would give me a great sense of satisfaction. Working at Vocatr will be hugely beneficial to me from a learning perspective as well allowing me to further develop my skills. 

5. Why Berlin?

I'd visited Berlin a couple of times and realised each time I returned home that Berlin seemed so much better! There seems to be so much more going on here and you can discover something interesting or exciting everywhere you go. Further to this the cost of living here is so much cheaper than in London and you can feel a lot more comfortable when going out and about that your bank balance isn't going to take a battering. 

It's been another busy few weeks here at Vocatr's HQ in betahaus (Berlin).

A few weeks back we launched the first prototype of a library (screenshot above) to capture and curate quality vocational expertise from people in the know.

We're learning a lot about why people like to share their advice and how to make the experience as brief and smooth as possible (while still gathering useful content).

In our customer and market development activities, we identified two avenues for disruption of the careers advice industry.

The first is how to gather direct advice (hence the first prototype). Given that so much careers advice comes from people for whom it's impossible to know all about various vocations, industries and companies - let alone some of the more interesting fields and occupations that have emerged in only the last couple of years - removing the 'middleman' is a very important first step.

The second potential for disruption is the application of technology to solving the 'what on earth should I do?' problem. 

And it's this challenge that we're starting to focus on for another super lean cycle or two of activity.

I can't really talk too much about it, but suffice to say we're exploring some very interesting ways to use recommender systems to match potential vocations to people's profiles. We've already got a prototype of an engine up and running (based on some very rough data) and we're already generating some interesting results.

You can see some early workings on the algorithm below. If I knew maths could be so interesting, I would have paid more attention in school!

On a separate note, we're also in the middle of varuous discussions for seed financing. We've been very happy to bootstrap things for the first few months. But now that we feel we've validated the problem, understood the market, identified areas for disruption, as well as get our heads around some possible commercial models, it's time to ramp up proceedings.

You don't solve a problem as big and complex as this without some serious talent and a little bit more time. On this note, we're delighted to announce that our first intern Natascia Pasero is joining Vocatr today. You'll be hearing from her shortly. And our second intern Josh Jeffries starts on Wednesday!

Stay tuned for more news very soon.

"What on earth am I going to do?"

This is the extraordinarily difficult question that many people ask themselves as they're leaving university. Some people find internships, some go travelling, many spend hours and hours searching the web trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.

Vocatr is trying to make it much simpler and easier for people to answer this question. We're doing it because we believe more people should be doing things they love.

The first step

To help people discover things they love, we're building a library of rich vocational information and advice.

It will be much more exciting than your usual library.

We've built a first, rough prototype where people with experience can contribute their advice via Twitter (if you've come here after submitting yours, thank you again!). To contribute via Facebook go here.  

We need your help to build up the library, so please ask friends and colleagues to contribute their expertise by visiting www.vocatr.com.

The next step

We are already starting to design a compelling service for people who are starting out to explore the library in rich and interesting ways. We've already tested several propositions and sketch prototypes with very promising results.

For now however we're focusing on building up the library. 

About Vocatr

Vocatr is an early stage startup based in Berlin. We believe that helping people find things to do they love is a problem that really, really matters.

We're cognisant of how big the challenge is so are currently on the lookout for crazy talented people with ridiculous ambition to join us.

If you'd like to get in touch, contact founder Justin McMurray via Twitter @juzmcmuz or email justin AT vocatr DOT com.

If you're keen to help in the meantime, you can send the folllowing tweet:

Help people starting out find things to do that they love. Contribute to @vocatr's library of vocational advice at http://www.vocatr.com 

Lots of activity here at Vocatr HQ at betahaus in Berlin.

About 7 weeks in we're effectively in the 7th lean cycle of "learn + make + test" attempting to solve the problem of how to help people discover and get started in vocations they care about (read more on why we're tackling this here).

Cycle #1 - Does this problem exist?

The first cycle was about testing the hypothesis of whether people starting out faced a problem when trying to choose 'what to do'. No surprises there, but based on some informal interviews and an online survey, the response was an overwhelming "YES!".

So the first box of whether the problem really existed was ticked. 

Cycle #2 - Is this problem worth solving?

We then tried to investigate whether it was a problem worth solving. There were two angles on this. Firstly, what is the value to someone of the problem being solved? And how is the problem being solved now. On the first count, we had overwhelming feedback that helping people learn what they wanted to do faster and easier was extraordinarily valuable. In many cases, it could help save years of difficulties (anguish even). Secondly, we found that while the problem is supposedly one being addressed by the careers advice industry, they seem to be doing a sub-standard job (to say the least). Not only this, but that industry is worth billions of dollars.

We'd learned that this was very much a problem worth solving. And we'd also found an industry to sack :).

Cycle #3 - What are some fast solutions that *might* solve this problem?

Cycle #3 was about quickly establishing whether this was a problem that could be solved in a more effective way. We drummed up 3 fast service propositions, all taking a slightly different tack, then found 8 wonderful young people around the world who were very much in our potential customer target.

Don't use a computer when you can use pen and paper.

We turned the sketches into half-decent wireframes in Keynote, and then conducted depth interviews via Skype. (I almost forgot, we also did a landing page test with Facebook ads to further test one particular proposition).

We quickly found that just about any solution could be of value. Because the actual way this problem is being solved is through hours and hours of mostly fruitless internet searching and quite a lot of reliance on crappy job sites.

We then refined a single service proposition which we thought had both the greatest potential, but also was easy enough to test.

But we'd also learned something else. It was apparent that with the fast-changing job market, new industries emerging seemingly overnight, and a huge gap in understanding what vocations are really like, the only way to generate truly useful and meaningful information and advice was directly from people in the field.

Cycle #4 - How to tackle the most difficult problem?

So how were we going to 'get' the content?

We created a detailed online survey entitled 'Hello What Do You Do?' which asked respondents to describe their vocations, what they did in a typical day, rate their job on a range of attributes, and then provide specific advice to people getting started (as well as useful links for their occupation).

With just a few tweets and carefully targeted emails to key friends and colleagues, we got a very good response. Nearly 120 responses in just over a week. From digital strategists to clown doctors to anthropologists.

This was excellent, but as we suspected, we very much understood that we were facing above all a content problem.

Cycle #5 - How does the broader service and business model stack up?

Cycle #5 focused on refining the overall service, data and business model. Working out where the value and IP would come from, what partners might be important, and also researching various revenue models. So we used typical tools including a lean canvas and in essence tried to whittle down the key priorities for a minimum viable product.

The important thing to mention here is that the MVP we (finally) realised we needed to build wasn't a stripped down service experience for university leavers. The problem before that is in generating the content. So our MVP is actually targeted at an audience other than out 'real' customers. It's the riskiest and most complex problem we face (by far). Hence the need for real focus on it. 

Cycle #6 - Let's get making

So cycle #6 (which we're still in) is effectively building an MVP; getting some code written to handle content collection, login/account creation, content admin, publishing and more. And crafting a nice experience for people interested in sharing information. Most crucially, we'll be A/B testing different approaches to test for the most important thing we need to understand; the motivations of people who we want to share their advice and expertise. I better not say too much more than that ;).

And of course these cycles are not linear and completely sequential. We actually have another cycle (#7) in progress which is testing a sketch prototype of the refined service proposition for our end customers. Something we do need to understand, but is the second priority for now. We're also using the very handy Launchrock service to gather potential testers.

There's many other things happening as well. Recruiting interns, working out the visa situation for Germany, identifying possible sources of funding, and starting to plan what we need to do if we're going to tackle this problem on a much larger scale. 

This challenge is an extraordinarily difficult one. And admittedly our ambition is quite vast. But we're motivated by solving the problem above anything else, and we know it will take great dedication, passionate talent, loads of help, and much experimentation to get there.

We'll keep on learning, learning, learning as we have been. And just maybe we'll make something that people don't merely want, but desperately need.