Pretty much the title.
The gist is - I’m working on a website to ideally help people customize resumes to a specific job application. I’m having a hard time finding customers to interview in order to validate or pivot. My first thought was LinkedIn but pretty much everybody I’m connected with has had a job for years.
Any advice on what channels I should use to start this process?
you could try finding relevant subreddits with people that are looking for help with finding a new job and interact with those that post about problems your business may solve.
Apollo.io mass cold email outreach based on job title (you find them in the tool). Offer an incentive for their time and drop a calendly link to book a slot directly from the email.
While you’re browsing LinkedIn you should reach out to people who is looking for a job.
https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?keywords=“open%20to%20work”
And bear in mind to add some custom note to your connection request.
Not sure about your budget, but there are some online recruiting tools that can help with this - Respondent.io and Zintro are two of the more affordable ones.
Otherwise I agree with the comments about finding events or communities that your target users might be a part of! Can you find any Facebook groups, Slack communities, etc. that might be relevant? In-person events like career fairs are great too.
Another option for validating your idea would be to run paid ads highlighting your value proposition (again, think about your audience when choosing the channel for this), and to see if they are in fact converting. Even if your website isn’t ready, you can direct people toward a landing page highlighting the website’s value, and ask them to join a waitlist / get notified when it launches. If you see strong conversion, that’s a great indication that your product is resonating with the audience you’re targeting (and as a bonus, you can capture their contact info to reach out for follow-up conversations). If the ads don’t convert, it’s an indication that you might need to do more discovery work around your target audience’s needs & how to align your product with them.