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Govt exam insurance product - case study

TLDR - The following doc is an exercise in creating a solution for govt exam failures (exams have a high quantity of application with a rejection rate of almost 99%) by reusing their marks for placement into the private sector companies

Background

Govt is the biggest employer in India, employing almost 47 lakh people. Due to the extreme reach of GOI, job security attached with a govt job & the pensions post employment makes govt job a prestigious pursuit in our Indian society. Now recruitment of most of these jobs is done via govt exams. Thus, these exams are viewed as a gateway to change the financial & social status by many Indian families.

Problem Space

❓ Problems -

Unfair risk to reward ratio - With the perception of breaking the social mobility barrier many Indians take massive amount of risk to achieve the rewards in hand. But many times these rewards do not do the justice to the risks taken
High failure rate - With almost 7.22 lakhs selected out of 22 crore candidates the failure rate is way too high. In case of failure, the sunk cost in terms of time & opportunity lost is way too high. There is no way to recuperate this cost any means as the marks achieved become useless for any new avenue explored by the candidate
Candidate search - For private employers it becomes hard to get a good talent fast as they’ve to setup their own filterization metric & reach out to relevant candidates to fulfill their positions. It becomes quite a task to navigate through such a clustered market
👨‍👩‍👦 Stakeholders
Search
Applicants
Desperate to escape the financial & social conditions Unaware of the opportunities available in market because of their environment View govt exams as a gateway to better life when in actuality they just want a secure income source
Government of India
Biggest employer in the country yet limited to how many they can employ Conduct exams for applicant filterization With the high number of applicants & limited positions a lot of high quality talent falls out of funnel
Private Employers
High in number but each of the employer has limited vacancy Have to setup individual set of filterization mechanics for each of the job post / new hiring
Applicants
Description
Desperate to escape the financial & social conditions
Unaware of the opportunities available in market because of their environment
View govt exams as a gateway to better life when in actuality they just want a secure income source
⁠


🔍 Importance of problem vs Satisfaction of existing solution
Problem
Importance of problems
Existing solutions
Satisfaction from existing solutions
Remarks
1
Unfair risk to reward ratio
High
Career counselling
Medium
Career counseling do help students in understanding different career paths available but fail to nudge them to the ones that’ll best suite them
2
​
​
Advice from previously failed students
Low
These students are present everywhere but are mostly seen as losers by the society, so any sane advice falls on deaf ears
3
High failure rate
High
NA
NA
All though our society is filled with people on their 2nd or 3rd attempt there really is no solution in the existing market to help them with there lives moving forward
4
Candidate search
Medium
Job Portals
Low
These end up generating rather weak leads and sorting the right candidates among the high quantity of leads becomes a task on its own
5
​
​
College placements
Low
Our education system is outdated making our students unemployable. Thus, making college placements as a low satisfactory solution
6
​
​
Upskilling platforms
High
These platforms generally have a high NPS among companies and are growing to be a powerful alternative to the above 2 solutions
There are no rows in this table
⁠

Solution space

💡Problem theme vs solution hypothesis
Problem theme
User story
Solution hypothesis
1
Unfair risk to reward ratio
As a young candidate I’m really confused whether giving this govt exam will ensure a brighter future for me so, it would be really nice to have guidance around the same
Educating youth about risks and how to apply it to take real life decisions
2
​
As a young candidate, I’m really not sure if I’m capable to crack this govt exam so, it would be really great if someone can help me analyze my profile & give me the best course of action
Profile analysis for candidates to help them understand whether they should prepare for a certain examination
3
High failure rate
As a failed applicant, I don’t know how to proceed & what would be the best course of action that’ll suit my acquired skills perfectly. So, it would be great if I could get help with regards to the same
Reuse the skills acquired during exam preperation and map it accordingly to the jobs present in market
4
​
As a failed applicant, I want to have a job to ensure basic necessities of my family but I don’t have the needed skills in the market as I was preparing for quite some yrs so, I would love to have a place that can upskill me
Coach the failed students for skills that can help them being useful for the workforce. Will be easier as these people were already working hard for their exams
5
​
As a failed applicant, I’m feeling low because of failure and also the time lost so, I would love to have some mental emotional support
Give emotional support either on indvidual basis or via community
6
​
As a failed applicant, I don’t know how I would fair in corporate interviews as I’ve been only studying for all this time so, I would love to have some help for this case
Interview preparation portal for candidates
7
Candidate filterization
As an employer, I want to filter out the candidates that are best suited for the roles I’m looking for so, would love to have tools or mechanisms that can fasten & ease up the process
Map the skills required by employer with the proven set of skills present in your talent pool. Proven based upon the marks in different govt exams + skills acquired via our upskilling efforts
There are no rows in this table
⁠

🏅 Prioritization

Here we’ll look into the impact vs effort framework to decide whether the given solution would really help us solve the problem with minimal effort thus, answering should we really pick the feature up (NOTE - real life would have lots of other factors to be considered like context or client demands but for sake of simplicity we’re only measuring these 2)
Let me just define the metrics to be used for both impact & effort


Impact
1
2
3
Impact on problem
Value Pts
Must Haves (MH)
20
Performance Benefits (PB)
10
Delighter Benefits(DB)
5
There are no rows in this table
⁠
Efforts
1
2
3
Effort
Time for completion
High
4 weeks
Medium
2 week
Low
1 week
There are no rows in this table
⁠
ROI
Solution
Impact
Effort
ROI
Priority
Remarks
1
Reuse the skills acquired(measured via the marks received in exams) during exam preperation and map it accordingly to the jobs present in market
Must Haves (MH)
Med
20/2 = 10
v1.0
Saves time for the aspirant, makes them market ready & gives them opportunity that they think they might have lost upon
Gives a standard for employers to judge upon & fasten up the process by bringing in quality applicants
2
Give emotional support either on indvidual basis
Performance benefit (PB)
Low
10/1 = 10
v1.0
Fairly easy to understand the problem (given the assumption that the applicant is ready to share it with us) & connect them with the right help
3
Coach the failed students for skills that can help them being useful for the workforce.
Must Haves (MH)
High
20/4 = 5
v1.1
Important for making aspirants market ready and fill their holes before taking them to market
4
Educating youth about risks and how to apply it to take real life decisions
Delighter Benefits(DB)
High
5/4 = 1.25
Not to be picked up
The biggest issue is the behavioral change needed for such a feature to work. Mostly people are a bit aware of the gravity of decisions but the glamorization of govt exams leads to no consideration to such concepts
5
Profile analysis for candidates to help them understand whether they should prepare for a certain examination
Delighter Benefits(DB)
High
5/4 = 1.25
Not to be picked up
It isn’t easy to do a profile analysis & make a statement about a candidate’s performance months prior to the exam. We would most probably need to be involved regularly in the candidate’s journey & the product will be seen as rather demotivating agent that disrupts the journey of user towards his/her goals
6
Create community experience for mental support
Delighter Benefits(DB)
High
5/4 = 1.25
Not to be picked up
Can be a great value addition but isn’t tackling the problem directly
Would be harder to create network effects as it is a bit taboo to talk about
Harder to regulate too
There are no rows in this table
⁠

🎯 Success metrics

Like any job portal website the north star metric for such a product would be - total # of applicants placed. To better understand the complete flow let us understand each set of metric with regards to pivotal positions in user journey -
Product distribution - # of failed applicant registered / exam
Mapping algorithm efficiency - # of applicable jobs / registered user
Applicant <> job interest fit - (# of applied jobs / # of applicable jobs) / registered user
Employee <> employer fit - (# of shortlist / # of applied jobs) / registered user
Final job interview success rate - (# of job calls / # of shortlist) / registered user
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