Goodwall is a professional development network created primarily for students, entrepreneurs, and young professionals which allows members to connect over shared interests, present themselves to universities and employers, and discover opportunities from scholarships to jobs. Members are prompted to build a professional and visually appealing profile that shows off who they are and what they have achieved in their lives, with a preference for graphic or video messages, rather than a plain-text version, such as on a resume. The Goodwall app is available on both iOS and Android. Goodwall was founded by Omar and Taha Bawa and was launched as a website in January 2014. In 2015, it was developed into a mobile-first platform. Goodwall SA, the company behind the platform, is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Goodwall Community
Goodwall was initially geared towards students, from high school students to those in university. Later, the company increased its scope to include entrepreneurs and young professionals. Today, the average age range of Goodwall’s members are 16–26, and Goodwall remains particularly attractive to the Gen Z and millennial generations. As of 2020, Goodwall has grown to over 1.5 million members located in more than 150 countries.
Goodwall’s Features
The Goodwall app offers members a variety of features blending standard social networking with professional development and social impact:
Web Profile
The web profile is a Goodwall member’s homepage on the platform. Each member receives a unique URL and a page which they can customize with professional, educational, and personal achievements, experiences, and more using images, videos, and text.
Posts
Goodwall offers 4 main posting options: default posts, questions, ideas, and achievements. On all post types, members can add text, video, images, keywords, and a location tag. For questions, ideas, and achievements, a unique banner marks the post as such, allowing other Goodwall members to locate relevant material in their feeds and react accordingly. In ideas, Goodwall has pioneered the "," a modern take on the .
Scholarship & Opportunity Search
Goodwall has more than 5 million listings for jobs and internships around the world. As a job board, Goodwall includes the standard search functions, such as location search, keywords, bookmarking, and more. On the education side, Goodwall has more than $1 million in scholarships and awards and hundreds of courses.
The Goodwall Blog
Goodwall’s blog was relaunched in late 2019 with an updated design and dedicated visuals. The blog aims to focus on many issues close to the hearts of students and young professionals, including entrepreneurship, navigating academia, finding jobs and careers, social impact, climate change, locating scholarships and awards, motivation, and more. More features exist on Goodwall, such as a messaging ability among members.
Partnerships
Goodwall works with universities, companies, and organizations providing opportunities for early professional development. At the high school level, this means applying to university and getting access to exclusive opportunities such as scholarships, volunteer programs, and summer camps. For university students, this means matching with employers for internships and jobs, and getting career guidance through live Q&A sessions.
Universities
Goodwall partners with universities across 4 continents to offer educational opportunities to its online community. High school students can find matching universities based on their grades, location and field of interest. Students can also join live Q&A sessions to chat directly with admissions teams from numerous universities and learn more about how to prepare for university applications.
Employers
Goodwall works with companies in all industries and offers internship and job opportunities to its community of young people. Users create a rich, holistic profile in order to receive relevant job offers that match their interests and career goals. Goodwall offers recruitment solutions for small to large sized companies worldwide.
History
The idea for Goodwall originated from End Ignorance, a blog that was created by Omar Bawa in 2012 with the goal of highlighting the various crises occurring around the world. Wanting to encourage positive deeds in response to these crises, the Bawa brothers expanded the blog into the social network that became Goodwall. In November 2019, Goodwall relaunched their following an overall site and app refresh which saw updated landing pages, a recalibrated site structure, and a refresh in the Goodwall logo and branding, among other things. Goodwall’s team has grown globally to over 50 people in based in 7 countries: the US, Switzerland, Germany, Serbia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Poland. The company has raised over $16 million in funding and is strategically backed by Randstad, one of the largest HR and recruitment companies globally, and Manixer, a private equity firm focused on education. On December 13, 2019, Goodwall's Android-version app reached a milestone of 1,000,000 downloads. In early June 2020, the Goodwall community surpassed 1.5 million members.
Awards and Recognition
With its growth and positive mission, Goodwall has been mentioned in, among others, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Inc Magazine, The Next Web, and the University Herald. In September of 2019, Goodwall was named as one of “Switzerland’s best scale-ups” by Venturelab.
