Every week I make time to sit with jobseekers.
Not because I can place them all. In most cases, I can't. They fall outside my specialisation - outside tech, outside the sectors I know well - and I have to be upfront about that.
But they still need help.
And the questions are always the same.
Why am I not hearing back? How do I actually stand out? Is my CV working against me? What do I say when they ask about salary? How do I answer the question I always freeze on?
I've been answering these questions one person at a time for years. And for years I've known the honest truth: my time doesn't scale. I can sit with ten people a week. I can't sit with a thousand.
So I started thinking about how to change that.
What the Jobseeker Hub Is
Today, we launched the VBench Jobseeker Hub - a free platform built to give jobseekers the same quality of guidance I'd give in a one-on-one conversation, without needing me in the room.
It covers the things people actually struggle with:
- Getting your CV right - not just formatting, but what it's actually communicating about you
- Positioning yourself properly - understanding what makes you distinct and how to articulate it
- Tailoring your applications - because a generic application is a rejected one
- Interview preparation - the questions to ask, the questions to expect, and how to answer them under pressure
- Personality trait profiling - understanding how you show up and how to use that self-awareness in a job search
- A complete training pathway - structured learning that takes you through every stage
It is not a job board. It is not a recruitment platform. It is a tool built for the person sitting at home wondering what they're doing wrong - when in most cases, they just haven't been shown what right looks like.
Why Free?
Because job searching is already expensive.
It costs time. It costs confidence. And for a lot of people, it costs money - through unpaid notice periods, gaps in income, or courses they've bought hoping for an edge.
The last thing someone who needs help should have to do is pay to access it.
So I've kept the core platform free. Everything that helps the most - the CV tools, the positioning guides, the interview prep, the training pathway - free to use.
There is a paid tier. It exists because the advanced AI tooling costs real money to run and I can't absorb that indefinitely. But if you need the free tools, you get the free tools. No tricks.
The Launch Incentive
For the first 500 people who sign up and anonymously contribute to the salary guide - you get full access to every tool, free of charge.
The salary data helps us build a more accurate market picture that benefits everyone. Your information is anonymous, not linked to your profile on any other TA system, not shared externally, and deletable by you at any time. You are in control of it completely.
A Note on Beta
Some tools are still being refined. We've tested everything, but this is a real platform and real platforms have rough edges.
If you find something broken - tell me. If you think something's missing that would help people - tell me that too. This wasn't built to sit still. It was built to get better.
The Bigger Reason
Recruitment gets a bad reputation because too much of it is transactional. You apply. You get silence. You apply again. More silence. You never find out why.
That experience grinds people down. And it shouldn't.
The best recruiters - the ones who stay in this industry because they actually care - they spend their time trying to change that dynamic. Not just filling roles. Helping people make good decisions about their careers.
The Jobseeker Hub is an extension of that. It's my attempt to make the help available to more people than I can reach in a week.
Go check it out.
https://www.vbench.com.au/jobseeker-hub
And if you know someone who's been job hunting for longer than they should have been - send it to them. That's the whole point.
Lee Margerum is the founder of Talent Aligned, a specialist technology recruitment consultancy based in Sydney. He has 15 years of experience in technical recruitment and builds tools to help both hiring teams and job seekers navigate the process better.