Why This Exists
First Job Finder came out of reading story after story on Reddit and elsewhere from young people and parents describing how hard the first job search has become. The pain is practical: where do you look, how do you get there, what kinds of employers are realistic, and how do you keep going when online applications disappear into silence?
That makes this the most direct Independence Engine in GameLab. A first job is not just a line on a resume. It is the first working piece of financial independence: money of your own, transportation tradeoffs, schedule discipline, confidence, and proof that effort can turn into options.
What It Does
The prototype starts with a focused Des Moines-area demo and turns public, preprocessed labor and mobility signals into a browser-only job-hunt map. Instead of pretending to list every open role, it helps a first-job seeker decide where to hunt and why.
- Compare teen-friendly employer clusters, transit access, wages, seasonal momentum, and support signals.
- Choose age, place, and filters to see how the practical search field changes.
- Get an explainable First Job Hunt Score with strengths, weak spots, confidence, and next actions.
- Use the 3D scene as a planning surface rather than a generic data dashboard.
The Bet
The useful move is not telling a teenager to "just apply everywhere." The useful move is narrowing the search to reachable clusters, job categories with better odds, and repeatable actions: visit during slower hours, bring availability, follow up, and avoid relying only on online forms.
The app is intentionally honest about confidence. If the data is inferred, regional, incomplete, or not a live posting feed, the interface should say so. Independence depends on knowing what you know, what you do not know, and what action still makes sense anyway.
How To Use It
- Start with a place and age, then scan the best-matching job categories.
- Toggle layers to see whether opportunity is blocked by transportation, weak density, or missing support.
- Click clusters to read the score rationale and suggested next move.
- Turn the output into a short weekly plan: where to visit, what to bring, and when to follow up.
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