Career Search Companion Helps Young Job Seekers Find Their Perfect Match

New York, NY -- (ReleaseWire) -- 04/19/2016 -- The leading mobile employment solution Wirkn today announced a partnership with Kik, a chat platform with 275 million registered users. Available now on Kik, Wirkn Jobs is a chatbot designed to provide job discovery based on a user's personality, location and interests. Wirkn Jobs is the first widely-available chatbot within Kik's newly launched Bot Shop focused on career development. It provides Kik's 275 million registered users with access to tens of thousands of available jobs across North America.

"Teens use Kik more than any other service," said Josh Jacobs, president of Kik Services. "Employers looking to hire teens need to reach out in places where teens spend time – and that's in chat. The Wirkn Jobs bot allows employers to recruit teens in a chat-native way and prove they will be great employers."

"We aim to empower youth to hone in on their interests and have better visibility into all available jobs in their area," says Todd Dean, CMO and co-founder of Wirkn. "The new Wirkn Jobs bot engages with users in a friendly conversational manner to help them find the brands they want to work with, on a platform where they already spend a significant amount of time."

The Wirkn Jobs bot profiles users through a series of questions, as well as a personality quiz, to present job opportunities tailored to their interests. As a user says hello, the Wirkn Jobs bot will reply "Hi, I'm Wirknbot. I'm here to help you land your next job. I can either help you search for a job, or give you a personality quiz to assess your ideal job type." The user can then either select "job search," which will confirm their current location and industry of choice, or select "personality quiz," where users answer a series of questions to determine their "job persona" and a list of jobs that are a good fit. Kik users select the job that best fits them and then create a Wirkn profile, including an optional 30-second video cover letter. As a leading mobile employment solution for shift based, customer service and junior positions within the retail and restaurant industries, Wirkn is now more accessible than ever to help young people explore new job opportunities.

About Wirkn
Wirkn is a mobile-first employment solution that leverages personality traits, interests and physical location to pair job seekers with available employment opportunities. The fastest way to connect to employers, Wirkn offers easy job discovery and provides a robust platform for dynamic video resume creation to best showcase a candidate's personal brand to prospective employers for jobs within the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries. In turn, employers save time and effort in finding and pre-screening qualified candidates, reducing operational costs and building a better team. Wirkn's recruitment platform is actively being used by brands such as Jack & Jones, Rudsak, McDonalds and Tim Hortons Franchisees, Bier Markt, David's Tea, Kiehl's, Barclays Center, Staples Center (LA Kings) and hundreds of Ivanhoe Cambridge mall tenants in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia.

Wirkn is currently available on the web at Wirkn.com, via iOS and Android apps and within the Kik Bot Shop.

About Kik Interactive, Inc.
Kik Interactive, Inc., connects the world through chat. The company is the maker of Kik, a chat network with more than 275 million registered users and 40 percent of U.S. teens where people can chat with friends and connect with chat-based services. Founded in 2009, Kik Interactive, Inc. is headquartered in Waterloo, with offices in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto.

For more information, please visit: https://www.kik.com.

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Toronto, ON -- (ReleaseWire) -- 06/02/2015 -- Wirkn Inc. CEO Derek Szeto announced today the company has raised a $1.2 million seed round and appointed Todd Dean, former ALDO Vice President of Cross Channel and Ecommerce as the group's new Chief Marketing Officer.

The round was led by two North American retail software heavyweights - Howard Stotland (Founder of STS Systems) and David Henning (former EVP of Epicor Retail).

Szeto made the announcement on the eve of STORE, Canada's largest retail conference - where the company has been tagged as one of 10 finalists in the Retail Council of Canada's Reboot Challenge and will be on hand in the "Disruption Alley".

Szeto says the company has been aggressively signing up retail, restaurant and event venue managers across North America and now boasts more than 1,000 locations actively hiring through the platform; tapping into Wirkn's growing user base of more than 40,000 job seekers.

Szeto says adding Todd Dean as Wirkn CMO gives the group fantastic insight into the mindset of major retailers throughout North America and was a key addition in the eyes of the investment community.

"Wirkn is focused on helping people find the right jobs and rewarding them for doing great work," says Dean. "I've seen first-hand how greater employee engagement drives a retail business."

Wirkn's impressive list of seed investors now includes prominent recruitment/staffing agencies, such as Drakkar and GuruLink, who were inspired by Wirkn's mobile-first approach and philosophy.

Wirkn has partnered with Drakkar which allows their 200,000 applicants to access shift work for world-class events including upcoming major concerts and sporting events.

Wirkn is aimed at youth, targeting the retail and hospitality industry, which represents more than 15.4 million employees in North America. With 39% of retail employees being under the age of 28, mobile is the perfect platform to help them find opportunities to develop their skills.

Available for IOS and Android, you can download Wirkn from the App Store here: http://wir.kn/store

About Wirkn
With offices in both Toronto and Montreal, Wirkn is the world's first mobile employment solution designed to help youth join the workplace and to help employers better connect with the mobile generation.

For more information, please contact:
Derek Szeto
CEO, Wirkn Inc.
derek@wirkn.com
888-359-8471 x701

Todd Dean
CMO, Wirkn Inc.
todd@wirkn.com
888-359-8471 x708

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