‘15-year-olds want to work’: At 16 Jobbli creator Serge Boghossian hopes to connect teens with jobs as many struggle to find work

Sixteen-year-old Serge Boghossian cold-called his local Cooksville Business Improvement Area in Mississauga with a request—to promote a job application site for teenagers that he built from scratch. 

Recognizing the need for an interface to connect young people with employment opportunities in a market that is currently not very friendly to them, the platform he launched, called Jobbli, spilled out from a messaging platform he had already created.

(Serge Boghossian)

He built both by himself. He had no mentor, no school program that taught him how to code, not even his parents helped. By watching YouTube tutorials and a lot of hard work, he eventually created Jobbli for Mississauga teens and hopes to one day get it into the hands of youth far and wide.

The idea behind the platform was simple. In an increasingly tough job market for youth, there should be an efficient way for teenagers aged 14 to 17 to land their first hands-on experience at a job. He looked around and found it was a space missing from the online employment market scene. 

Born and raised in Mississauga, the teen entrepreneur knows firsthand the challenge of getting your foot in the door, especially during these turbulent times, with technology displacing more and more work, and uncertainty around many traditional jobs filled by teens due to everything from tariffs to budget cuts as inflation pressures persist. 

Last month Statistics Canada released a report that painted a bleak picture for young people, with the screaming sub-head: Youth unemployment rate increases.

“The youth (15 to 24 years) unemployment rate rose by 0.5 percentage points to 14.3% in April, as employment varied little and the number of young people searching for work edged up (+14,000; +3.3%). The youth unemployment rate was virtually unchanged on a year-over-year basis but remained markedly above the pre-pandemic average of 10.8%.”

Statistics Canada reported that the youth unemployment rate for students in April was even worse, 16 percent, which was 2.5 percentage points higher than the rate for non-students.

Of the 84,000 jobs lost in February across the country, Statistics Canada reported that more than half were jobs filled by youth.

With more teenagers looking for work, Boghossian noticed the platforms used by older workers to find jobs were not very useful for teens. 

“Other platforms like Indeed.com are not built for teenagers, they're built for people that have built-in professional foundations… I came up with the idea of Jobbli for teenagers that struggle to find jobs. It's a tool for employers to connect with teenagers.”

Jobbli “establishes a connection between the job seeker and the employer.”

The idea was born out of necessity, as he experienced his own challenges as a teenager with little to no experience in most areas. As more of his friends also started complaining about being out of work for the summer, he set out to solve the problem himself.

Platforms such as indeed.com and LinkedIn are specifically designed, as Serge points out, for people who already have their education credentials and usually for those with years of specialized experience, leaving teen job seekers shut out from these rapidly growing online employment network spaces.

Even a first job can get a young person a leg up on established job platforms, but finding that first opportunity is the challenge. All someone needs is for the door to be opened, just a crack. 

Search engines did not provide networking connections he was looking for.

Once he identified the significant gap in the market, Boghossian set out to create Jobbli and fill the space.

“Why should you find jobs anywhere when there should be a platform to do so?” He wanted to create a UX easy for all teens to navigate, “Easy and very accessible.”

Serge Boghossian says for teens looking for work, relying on online platforms such as Indeed or LinkedIn, geared for older workers, is not ideal.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer)

He cautions that using AI to help students look good to prospective employers is a pitfall his platform helps them avoid. 

Co-op programs are useful, he says, but not so much for youth still at the secondary school level or below, and he says teachers are also finding it difficult to connect employers to teenagers through traditional partnerships.  

“Having this platform could connect the employers looking to get co-op students those roles in a much better field, instead of connecting with high school teachers.”

To protect privacy and keep his users safe, Supabase is used for its built in layers of protection, what he calls the “brains behind the platform.”

“I don't want employers to send any malicious links to the job seekers. So having that option helps me protect both the employer and the job seeker.

“We're dealing with minors. So having that layer of security and privacy is extremely important to us. It makes the teenager less vulnerable… ”

He previously used his coding skills to build a messaging platform using HTML and Javascript. When creating Jobbli, he used that experience to build a more complex platform that has important messaging features. 

He released Version 1.0 of Jobbli to get some feedback and traction from teens.

“Looking back, that approach was the right call. It gave me the space to refine the platform before it was in the spotlight. Building something this specific for Mississauga teens, I wanted to ensure the foundation was solid before putting it in front of a wider audience.” 

He finds the excitement of launching his own platform has helped him focus on his academics. “Having that little motivation inside of you everyday could really help you accomplish big things.” he said. 

A big step for him was approaching the Cooksville Business Improvement Area (BIA), even if it was just to make his pitch.

“I decided to give them a call and see what would happen. That was the first time I met with the BIA in person.”

He said he’s in early talks with myBlueprint, an educational and career planning platform that is Canadian and used by both parents and students. His main task now that the platform is ready is to approach employers about using Jobbli.

The grand plan is to take Jobbli global…one day. Right now, he’s waiting for Mississauga teens and businesses to sign up, while he pushes his platform out on a range of sites and media spaces.

“You should always build something… Keep building when you’re waiting. Keep building, but have it ready in the real world.”

Email: [email protected]

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