How ReachRole Focused on Problem-Solved and User Feedback to Grow Under $1K MRR

The moment that pushed me to build ReachRole was when my company laid off around 25 employees during a call that lasted only about five minutes. Watching people I had worked with suddenly lose their jobs was difficult. What stayed with me even more was seeing how difficult it was for them to find their next opportunity. Even after 4 months, only around 3–4 of them had managed to find new jobs. I started thinking about how I could actually help them, especially with something I knew well - technology and resumes. That was the starting point for ReachRole. I wanted to build something that could help people understand why their resume wasn't getting through, improve it for a specific job, and give them a better chance of getting an interview. It wasn't initially about building a business; it started with wanting to help people I personally knew, and then I realized the same problem was affecting many other job seekers.

One growth tactic that worked well for us was creating practical, problem-focused career content around resumes, ATS optimization, job applications, and interview preparation. Sharing useful insights on platforms such as LinkedIn and Reddit helped us start meaningful conversations with job seekers and build awareness organically. Instead of simply promoting ReachRole, we focused on addressing real problems candidates face during their job search. This helped us understand what people were struggling with and which topics generated the most interest. On the other hand, one tactic that completely flopped was trying to promote the product too broadly across different audiences without first identifying the segment with the strongest need. Our messaging became too generic, and the engagement was significantly lower than expected. The biggest lesson was that growth is not just about reaching more people. It is about reaching the right people with a message that directly addresses a problem they care about. Since then, we have focused more on specific audiences, practical content, user feedback, and problem-driven messaging rather than simply advertising the product.

One of the most common things I hear from my friends is that they are applying to many jobs but aren't getting interviews. What makes it frustrating for them is that they often don't know what they're doing wrong. They may have several years of relevant experience, but after sending dozens of applications without getting responses, they start wondering whether their resume is the problem. This is something I noticed while talking to people about ReachRole as well. A resume can look perfectly fine to a person, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is a good match for a particular job description. Candidates also tend to use the same resume for many different positions because rewriting it for every application is time-consuming. I tried to address this by making ReachRole's feedback more actionable rather than simply giving someone an ATS score. The goal is to show candidates where their resume is weak for a specific job, which keywords or skills may be missing, and what they can improve. I've also learned that users don't necessarily want another complicated tool. They want to understand the problem quickly and know what they should do next. That has influenced how I think about ReachRole and the features I continue to build.

One thing I think people get wrong about the job-search market is assuming that if someone isn't getting interviews, they simply aren't qualified for the job. From what I've seen, that isn't always true. Someone can have the right experience and skills but still struggle to get an interview because their resume doesn't communicate that experience in a way that matches the particular job they're applying for. I started understanding this more deeply after seeing my colleagues I knew struggle with their job searches following the layoffs at my company. Some of them had years of professional experience and strong technical skills, but finding a new opportunity was still difficult. It made me question the assumption that experience alone is enough. Another thing I noticed is that many candidates treat their resume as a fixed document. They create one resume and send the same version to dozens of companies. But different companies can describe very similar roles using completely different requirements, terminology, and priorities. Building ReachRole has changed the way I look at this. I now see the resume as something that should be connected to the specific opportunity. The challenge isn't always that candidates lack skills; sometimes they aren't presenting the skills they already have in a way that clearly matches what the employer is looking for.

Over the next 6–12 months, our focus is to make ReachRole a more complete AI-powered career companion. We plan to strengthen AI-powered resume analysis and job-specific tailoring, improve interview preparation with personalized feedback, and introduce smarter career recommendations based on a candidate’s skills, experience, and goals. We also want to expand our application tracking and job-search tools so candidates can manage their entire job search from one place. Our broader goal is to move beyond simply helping candidates create better resumes and build a platform that continuously guides them from job discovery to interview preparation to landing the right role.

Before building ReachRole, we had a strong background in technology and software development, including experience building web applications, APIs, and digital products. We also had firsthand exposure to the challenges developers and professionals face when searching for jobs and navigating career growth. We were not starting completely from scratch - we brought technical expertise, product-building experience, and an understanding of how technology can solve practical problems. But building in the career-tech and AI space required us to learn quickly, validate assumptions with users, and continuously adapt the product. ReachRole grew from combining our technology experience with a real understanding of the problems job seekers face.

Our biggest mistake was trying to build too many features too early instead of focusing on the core problem we wanted to solve. In the beginning, we explored multiple career tools and ideas because we wanted ReachRole to become a complete career platform from the start. While this gave us many possibilities, it also made the product direction less focused and slowed down our ability to validate what users actually needed. This experience taught us an important lesson, a product does not need to do everything from day one. It needs to solve one important problem exceptionally well and create a clear reason for users to keep coming back. Since then, we have become much more focused on validating ideas before investing heavily in them, listening closely to user feedback, and prioritizing features based on real user needs rather than assumptions. We are also taking a more iterative approach to product development, improving the core experience before expanding into additional capabilities. The biggest lesson has been that focus and execution matter more than simply having a long feature list. This has helped us build ReachRole with a clearer product direction and a stronger focus on delivering genuine value to job seekers.