ABOUT THIS EPISODE
What happens when hiring systems are designed to recognize one kind of candidate?
After leaving her role as Director of Strategy and Analytics at Kickstarter, Laurie Stark applied to more than 100 jobs. She used AI to polish her cover letters, prepare for interview questions, and tried to package her nonlinear career into something hiring systems could easily categorize. It wasn’t working—and the person she was presenting to employers wasn’t authentic.
So Laurie used her background in strategy, analytics, design, media, and paid acquisition to build Role Call, a subscription job-matching service that searches more than 17,000 company websites for relevant opportunities. Unlike job platforms built around selling services to employers, Role Call works directly for its paying customers: job seekers. The service is now approaching 100 customers.
Role Call is a job-matching platform for mid-level and senior knowledge workers in the United States. It scans the websites of over 18,000 companies and matches those jobs to job seekers based on a comprehensive candidate profile that goes beyond job titles and a simple list of skills. When there's a potential match, the seeker is notified, usually within a few hours of the job being posted.
Laurie joins Jess to discuss:
- How hiring systems reward candidates whose careers are easiest to categorize
- Why major job platforms are designed around the needs of employers
- Ghost jobs, misleading posting dates, and the emotional cost of applying
- Why multidisciplinary careers can be difficult to explain but valuable when building something new
- Using AI to build a product without surrendering human judgment
- The less glamorous realities of becoming a solopreneur
- Why slow, customer-supported growth can be better than venture capital
- How employed workers can preserve their options before a layoff happens
This is a conversation about finding work, creating work, and recognizing the value of experience that a machine can’t replicate or understand.
Interested in trying Role Call?
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Check out: https://rolecall.careers
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Podcast Guest: Laurie Stark
Laurie has spent more than 10 years working in tech, including recent stints at Kickstarter and Google. In 2026, she launched Role Call, a job-matching platform, as a solo founder. She lives in Los Angeles with her two cats.
Connect with Laurie: Laurie Stark on LinkedIn
Need better job leads? Check out Role Call: https://rolecall.careers
Podcast Host: Jess Lowry
Jessica Lowry is the Founder and Socio-technical Systems Designer at ENID Studio, a collective of practitioners that enable organizations to redesign work, services, and governance for an AI-enabled future through participatory design and human-centered digital transformation.
She is also a member of Effective Immediately, a community for people building microbusinesses. Members get honest feedback, business fundamentals, and access to people a few steps ahead while they validate their idea, land first customers, and build the foundation.
Connect with Jess: Jess Lowry LinkedIn
Join Jess at Effective Immediately
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