“The job search process is broken,” says Graham Tyson ’25, who recently graduated Bryant with his degree in Marketing. “It takes up so much of your day, and you get so little in return. I’ve spent hours researching companies I’m considering applying to, digging through LinkedIn or their websites, manually entering all my experience, answering countless questions, only to never hear back.”
It’s a complaint commonly heard from job seekers, including those with years of work experience as well as those just entering the job market.
Many companies have completely digitalized their application process, resulting in hundreds or even thousands of applications for a single, desirable position. Applicants often submit hundreds of applications, most of which go completely unacknowledged. Only a fraction result in a follow-up interview.
These anecdotal experiences are supported by research showing that the average job posting generates 250 applications. Of those, perhaps four to six people are called for an interview — approximately 2 percent of applicants.
Cole Braun ’25 wants to “give people back their shot” to streamline and target the job application progress with ORiON, a new online platform that allows users to upload their resume and automatically apply to multiple positions.
Essentially, ORiON uses the same kind of AI that companies are using to screen the thousands of job applications they receive, although Braun says that Orion-submitted applications don’t look or feel like they’re getting an AI assist.
“It's an AI that's for allows you to put your resume in, indicate the type of job you're looking for, and applies you to hundreds of jobs in seconds,” says the company founder and CEO. Braun previously developed the AthLink social networking app for student-athletes while attending Bryant, where he earned his degree in Business Administration and played lacrosse.
“It's an AI that allows you to put your resume in, indicate the type of job you're looking for, and applies you to hundreds of jobs in seconds."
ORiON “caters each application, resume, cover letter to each job,” explains Braun. Unlike tools like LinkedIn’s Easy Apply, “Companies don't know you're actually AI-applying, because everything goes directly through the company as if you were applying as a human through their website.”
The platform also uses AI to counter the AI tools used to screen resumes, he says.
“A lot of companies have AI ad blockers that scan your resume, and if it doesn’t have certain keywords, you're automatically sent to the decline list,” says Braun. “Our AI makes sure that you have all the keywords to get through the AI checker and get pushed on to a real human.”
Tyson, a lacrosse teammate of Braun’s, is among the early adopters of ORiON.
“I customized my filters to match exactly the kind of companies I want to work for, and within seconds full pages of job listings popped up with clear descriptions and, best of all, a big blue ‘Apply’ button,” says Tyson. “Being able to apply with just one click, without retyping all the same information over and over, was a game-changer. I applied to 10 roles the first day, another 10 the next, and within a few days I had two interviews lined up, and even more since then.”
"I applied to 10 roles the first day, another 10 the next, and within a few days I had two interviews lined up, and even more since then.”
Vastly reducing the amount of time spent applying for jobs has freed Tyson up to do more research on the companies where he has landed interviews. “I also love how ORiON keeps track of the jobs I’ve applied to on my dashboard and updates them as they move into the interview stage,” he says.
ORiON can find jobs in any profession, and searches can be customized geographically, by salary, or other variables. It can find full-time work, part-time work, freelance gigs, and contract positions.
“You could even use it to find a summer job or an internship,” says Braun. “You could use Orion if you just got laid off and you've been the workforce for 30-plus years. Obviously, college students and college graduates will use it the most for that internship and that job right out of college. But this is not limited to certain jobs.”
The links between Bryant and ORiON extend to Steve Corndell ’08, an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship and CEO of cloud computing firm envO, who was one of Braun’s mentors and now serves on the ORiON/AthLink board of directors. Cordell also connected Braun with Caesar Bell, who built the ORiON platform infrastructure, and Nickoy Bennett, a sales and strategy consultant.
Future plans include building ORiON's functionality into the AthLink app and create a networking hub to augment the job search process.
The app is free to download, and after a short free trial the pricing structure for job searches works out to about 30 cents per application. It’s an investment Braun says will be repaid many times over in time saved and jobs found.
“We're the only platform we know of that can screen every job on the internet and apply you to jobs on the internet, as well,” he says.