The UX of match-making markets
When we are ready to start working, we go out to the working market, we reach for a job-hunting sites & apps. When we are ready to start dating, we go out to the dating market, we reach out for dating sites & apps. When we are ready to rent a room/flat/house, we go out to the dating market, we reach out to real estate sites & apps. The Job, date and housing markets have more in common than one might think at first glance.
The hunter, the hunting and the cross-selling: the Job market has Jobseeker, Recruiter and Course provider personas. The Dating market has Hunter, Hunted and Erotic provider personas. The Housing market has Hunter, Offering and Professional services provider personas.
User needs to find the perfect match: Jobseekers need to match with a perfect Job/Manager. Love hunters need to find their perfect partner. Househunters are looking for their perfect new house. All markets try to learn all the needed attributes of their respective Users that will enable them to find the best counterpart.
Under this light these markets seem pretty similar, don’t they? This can be expanded to any market where plain numbers are not doing the job. Let’s say you are a mobile phone manufacturer and in the market for a CPU. You will look for something that meets your specific requirements, which are all measurable. Also the other part will have provided every possible aspect of the CPU in order to make your choice easier. Looking for a partner, a perfect job or a house is not like that. 
Yes, we all have a certain type of person / job / house that we are looking for but still ‘chemistry’ between people is not quantifiable. The other part definitely did not provide every possible aspect of their offering. Yes, we kinda-probably-maybe know where we want to go with our careers but one day we enter a nice building, interview with the right manager and we are sold! Also in this market, the company offering the job definitely did not provide every possible aspect of their offering.
You are now seeing were this is going: these markets will flourish because of the human element involved. With the help of AI these markets will get better at matching but there will be many years before a machine can grasp the full extend of a personality and offer the perfect match on a Job, a Life partner, a house, a car or a set of silverware. For that to happen, it should fully understand both parties which is currently virtually impossible. In the mean time, UX-wise feel free to treat these markets as equal keeping in mind that the biggest differentiator is the human element and the state of mind at the decision making point. Don’t tell anyone, but that the reason UX exists in the first place 🙂 .
