The man behind our featured company in this week’s interview section is Ben Ng. Ben Ng is the founder of Available.App. Available.App is a social employment platform like job search platform that connects freelancers and employers.
For more details, read on.
Ben was born and raised in Hong Kong but he has been a resident of NYC since 2001.
He started his college education majoring in Computer Science. However in his junior year, he switched to film.
According to Ben, it was a difficult decision to make – because of his unparalleled passion for both Computer Science and Film.
“I know after 9 years of a film career I made the right choice,” he said in our pre-interview chit-chat.
During his career, Ben has always gone all out on every project he’s participated in. He has worked on various projects from smaller projects to larger ones like The Amazing Spider-Man, Noah, Ninja Turtles, and Daredevil (TV Series).
Available.App is the embodiment of efficiency, which is also a big part of Ben’s personality. And as Ben Ng put it:
“Efficiency is an important part of my personality but it’s also a large part of what makes my app so useful in the freelancing industry.“
On top of his vast range of experience in the film industry, Ben has proven his efficiency by developing Available.App on his own for the past year. However, more recently some of his friends have contributed to the coding and marketing of Available.App.
Let’s get down to the Interview.
As a start, can you introduce Available.App to the readers – what it is and what it does?
Available.App is a social employment platform that connects freelancers and employers in real time, making finding jobs and hiring easier.
What’s the main concept behind Available.App? What pain points does it solve?
All freelancers know how short most projects can be; the average freelancing job can last a day to a few days to a few months, and before you know it, one job has ended and you’re already back looking for the next one.
The other side of the coin is being the employer constantly looking for manpower – always having to keep track of who is available and when; not to mention having lots of other stuff to handle.
Many people prefer to work with who they are already familiar with and more often than not, that is not the case. So, unfortunately you may not know who you’re actually working with until the day of the job.
Right now there is no efficient and effective system for finding work and hiring freelancers; the whole process simply takes too much time and effort.
So with Available, you streamline the hiring process by finding out who is available with one click. You can also update your schedule anytime and the amazing thing is now everyone on your contact list will know that you are available – no more mass texting and waiting for an answer.
How do the users choose their jobs / hire their freelancer? Would it show multiple options and users can decide which one that they want to work with?
The user would have more choices now since you can see all the jobs available among your friends through the notification function.
Just one click and you can even search for jobs outside of your normal network but still within the 6 degrees of separation, just in our job search platform.
Is there any possibility to cancel the job or event? If yes, is there any ‘penalty’ for users who do so?
Yes, the users can cancel the job they posted at any time.
As we know, freelance work can change at a moment’s notice. That’s why we shouldn’t penalize the user for that.
How long did it take for you and your team to build Available.App?
It took us a full year from the initial idea stage of job search platform to the first version arriving in the App Store. It is always a work in process; my team is working on improving it as we speak.
How do you differentiate your app from the competitors? What makes Available.App stand out from the crowd?
There are traditional websites like Freelancer.com, Upwork, Indeed and the old school Craigslist.
They are all great websites but what they don’t understand is how freelancing employment really works. We also create an explainer video for our site.
At Available.App, we think of freelancers first, we march on the front lines with them because we ARE them. We understand that networking is 90% of finding every job; rarely do we go apply for a job post from a stranger. So we connect people through the people we already know and trust.
What is your next plan for Available.App?
The app is still new to the market; it is always a work in progress. We are still testing what works and what doesn’t.
We are gathering user feedback everyday so we can build better core functions for users. It is better for both developers and users. And when we start to build other platforms, we will have a model to follow. So that we use explainer video to share our apps.
Why Now?
There are about 54 million [freelancers] in the US now, by 2020 there will be 50% of American workforce freelancing. In order to handle the workload, a better employment system is a must.
Ben and his team have been working really hard to develop Available.App in order to create the ideal platform for not only connecting freelancers and employers, but also increasing the range of connections on both sides.
We salute the hard work, and would like to give Available.App a shout out.
That concludes our interview with Ben Ng, the brilliant mind behind Available.App that will bring freelancers and employers onto one platform.
If you’re a freelancer looking for a job, or an employer looking to hire freelancers, Available.App is definitely an app you can count on to find manage, and optimize your work.
