As a student entrepreneur, Shreesha Maddur is always looking to make his product distinctive.
While participating at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, he was surrounded by the most innovative products on the market.
“When you go to CES, you’re seeing flying cars and VR headsets from companies like Sony or Amazon,” Maddur said. “I had to consider how to stand out. I decided to create ResumeAI, where you upload your resume and get instantaneous feedback.”
Maddur, a senior in computer science with an entrepreneurship minor, is the co-founder and CEO of TalleyJobs, a job-search website geared toward students in finance, supply chain, marketing, data, and computer science.
“It started two years ago when I was taking a class for my entrepreneurship minor. The goal of the class was to come up with a business and run with it for a semester.”
Maddur didn’t have a good idea, but he was applying for internships at the time.
“I discovered it was taking me too much time to find jobs, so I decided to interview hundreds of students and get their thoughts on job searching. Students wanted to limit the amount of time they were spending looking for employment.”
After collecting student input, Maddur and his two other TalleyJobs co-founders - Nate Wood and Nikhita Khare - designed a matchmaking algorithm to directly connect students with jobs in their skillset. The project placed third in the 2022 Burgess Institute’s New Venture Challenge, a pitch competition for MSU student entrepreneurs. It also was one of three student startups selected to represent MSU at the 2023 international CES.
“Through a lot of iterations of our website, we’re at a place now where we source the best quality jobs on the internet,” he said. “By quality, we mean that every job is well-paid, has good benefits, and generally has few applicants. Students loved those three values and that our website does the filtering and advanced searches for them.”
Maddur’s recent success at CES followed a university wide honor presented last fall. He was named MSU’s 2022 Adam M. Enfroy Digital Entrepreneurship Scholar, an annual Burgess Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation scholarship to support digital-based student startups.
“I know the two people who won it before me,” he said. “To be considered a part of that group or even along those lines is incredible.”
Maddur plans on going full-time on TalleyJobs and setting up office space near the Hatch, a co-working space available to MSU entrepreneurs. Like many seniors, thinking about graduating is intimidating.
“It is scary,” he said. “I’ve been taking it a day at a time… but right now, I feel like [Burgess] has done their best and now it’s my responsibility to make sure that I can keep this momentum and be able to do this on my own and with my two co-founders.”
Written by Lia Bergin, student writer in MSU Engineering Marketing and Communications.