In the complex landscape of career development, Jhalak Gupta stands out as a visionary who understands that a job search is far more than a simple data match—it’s a deeply personal, often emotional journey. As the co-founder of myjobb AI, an AI-powered job copilot, Gupta is on a mission to transform this experience, helping job seekers find hyper-relevant opportunities faster by truly understanding their skills, preferences, and goals.
With a background spanning growth strategy, impact assessment, and co-founding Skillarena (a bootstrapped skill-development platform that impacted over 100,000 young people), Gupta brings a unique blend of user empathy and sharp execution to the AI space. In this exclusive interview for Qolaba’s AI Builder Series, she shares her insights on building AI that truly understands human needs, the ethical considerations involved, and the future of career guidance.
The Emotional Nuances of Career Decisions
Building myjobb AI has been a profound learning experience, revealing that “careers are not logical datasets; they are emotional journeys,” Gupta reflects. The biggest challenge has been translating this real-world complexity—where skills, experience, family realities, confidence, and timing all converge—into AI systems that are structured, fair, and scalable.
While many solutions offer surface-level matching, true career guidance demands a deeper understanding of context, aspiration, and readiness. “This requires far more thoughtful design than standard automation,” she explains. For Gupta, the critical bottleneck in applied career AI isn’t algorithmic sophistication, but rather genuine human understanding.
From Skill Access to Decision Clarity: AI’s Transformative Role
Gupta’s journey from Skillarena to myjobb AI highlights a consistent commitment to empowering individuals. Her time at Skillarena made it clear that while skills are crucial, people often struggle more with navigation than with learning.
“AI shifted my approach from building ‘access to resources’ toward building clarity in decision-making,” she states. The job market’s inefficiency isn’t a shortage of data; it’s an overwhelming cognitive overload for job seekers. AI’s most significant value, in her view, is its ability to reduce this overload, organize complex information, and empower individuals to move from confusion to confident action.
Balancing Personalization with Privacy and Ethics
Working directly with job seekers means that the responsibility of handling deeply personal career data is very real for myjobb AI. Trust, therefore, must be foundational.
Gupta emphasizes a principle of “data minimization,” collecting only what is necessary for relevant recommendations, and securing all sensitive user data with robust encryption. Transparency is equally paramount: “users deserve to clearly understand how their information is used.”
Beyond data security, ethical AI means continuously scrutinizing systems to prevent the reinforcement of hidden biases related to career gaps, unconventional paths, or diverse backgrounds. “At scale, fairness must be built into the design itself because AI should widen opportunity, not quietly restrict it,” Gupta asserts.
Organizational Shifts for Effective AI Adoption
Leading cross-functional teams in AI product development has taught Gupta that embedding AI effectively requires significant organizational shifts. The most crucial change? Moving from feature-driven teams to problem-driven teams.
“AI cannot live in silos,” she explains. Product, data, and operations must function as a unified entity, constantly testing real-world assumptions rather than building in isolation. Teams must also cultivate a willingness to “ship before everything feels ‘perfect’,” recognizing that AI improves through iterative feedback loops, not theoretical optimization.
Ultimately, Gupta believes that successful AI adoption is less about tools and more about fostering a culture of speed, openness to learning, and comfort with iteration.
The Future of Career AI: Intelligent Ecosystems
Looking ahead, Gupta is particularly excited by the emergence of more context-aware, agent-driven AI systems that can proactively guide individuals rather than simply react to their queries.
She also anticipates rapid advancements in how AI understands career mobility, mapping skill adjacencies, predicting transitions, and offering highly personalized development paths. This evolution will enable platforms to support individuals not just in job discovery, but in long-term career planning and upskilling decisions.
For founders in the recruitment space, this represents an exciting shift “from building marketplaces to building intelligent ecosystems.” Jhalak Gupta’s vision for myjobb AI and the broader future of career technology is clear: leverage AI thoughtfully to make the job search less chaotic, more merit-driven, and genuinely accessible for millions.
This interview is a part of Qolaba’s AI Builder Series featuring thought leaders who are showcasing innovation and driving change with AI.
Jhalak Gupta is the co-founder of myjobb AI, an AI-powered job copilot. She previously co-founded Skillarena, a skill-development platform, and brings extensive experience in growth, strategy, and user-centric product building to the AI space.
