You might find your next job through your financial app

More than 20 million involuntary job separations happen in the U.S. each year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For many workers, the next step is navigating an increasingly complex hiring process that relies on automation and digital screening, often without the tools or visibility to understand how those systems work. EarnIn, an earnings management and payroll company, examines how financial apps are trying to help address the discrepancy between job seekers and job posters.

According to the World Economic Forum, more than 80% of companies use automation or AI somewhere in their hiring process. Resumes are scored, ranked, and filtered often before a human sees them. The workers hit hardest may also be the ones least likely to have access to the recruiters, resume coaches, and professional networks that make these systems navigable. In many cases, the problem is a lack of access to the tools that translate ability into an interview. In a 2025 Checkr survey, 58% of respondents said they believe that it is impossible to land an interview or get a response through traditional job boards and job search websites.

The incumbent model can’t fix this because it was never built to

Job boards are built around employer demand: The employer is the customer, and the candidate is the inventory. Success is measured in postings, promoted listings, recruiter subscriptions, and application volume — not in whether a worker actually gets hired.

But more applications don’t produce better outcomes for workers or employers. They produce noise: application black holes, algorithmic filtering, ghost jobs. According to iHire’s 2025 Online Recruiting Report, 59% of candidates said applying for jobs and not hearing back from employers was a top job search challenge, while 51% of employers said they were frustrated by candidates ghosting them. Qualified candidates can face months of rejection; employers, drowning in volume, lean harder on the same platforms, which are incentivized to solve for quantity, not quality.

Change who pays, and you change the product

The job board model shares the same structural flaw as many other recommendation platforms. When a company earns money from what it recommends, those recommendations end up working for the payer, not the user. The fix is considering a different business model. Costco makes its margin on membership fees, so it has no reason to steer you toward a higher-margin brand. It can simply carry the best thing at the lowest price. When the revenue comes from elsewhere, the recommendation can be based on what’s best for the user.

The same logic extends to how the tools themselves can be free or nearly free. Shopify gives merchants software for almost nothing and makes its money when those merchants actually sell, through payments, financing, and transaction fees. Building tools that genuinely help a small business grow is the business model, because Shopify profits when its merchants do. Job search can work the same way. When a company’s success depends on customers remaining employed, earning income, and improving their financial health, its incentives are naturally aligned with helping people maintain and grow their earnings.

Why financial platforms are positioned to help

Financial platforms have scale. Financial services contribute more than $2 trillion annually to the U.S. economy, and financial apps have become a routine part of how many people manage their finances. That reach matters because a job search tool is only useful if people can find it, and financial apps are already part of many people’s daily routines.

Then there’s the data. Platforms connected to workers’ financial lives can see things a job board can’t. Whether through payroll, banking, earned wage access, or other financial tools, changes such as reduced hours, a disrupted paycheck, or a job transition can show up in earnings data in near real time, often before a worker has updated a profile anywhere. A job board doesn’t know when someone has been laid off, but a platform connected to earnings may. That changes the starting point for help. That creates ways to connect people with jobs, financial resources, skills training, and higher-paying opportunities as needs evolve.

Workers use job boards episodically, when they need work. Financial platforms, by contrast, may already engage with workers before, during, and after a job transition. That creates new ways to support workers with jobs and resources tailored to their needs. The question “where will people find their next job?” has had the same answer for decades: a job board. But as hiring grows more automated and traditional models are strained, that answer looks increasingly fragile. Looking forward, the more interesting answer may be the financial app already on your phone.

This story was produced by EarnIn and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.