You Know You Have Talents. ProMytheUs Wants Others to Know Too.

WOOSTER, Ohio – You know what you enjoy doing. You know the things you’re good at. (If you’re lucky, those are the same things.) But how do you identify what your fundamental talents really are? And how do employers looking for people with those particular talents find you, especially if you’re not in New York City, or Chicago, or Los Angeles?

Vedica Jha and Gio Tramonto, both Wooster seniors, are building an online tool to help answer those questions.
With the support of the college’s entrepreneurship program, and encouragement from multiple mentors on campus, they are developing ProMytheUs, a website where you can identify your strongest talents, create a profile that includes supporting evidence, such as a portfolio of your work or the testimony of colleagues and managers, and ultimately connect with organizations looking for people like you.
In Greek mythology, Prometheus defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to mankind, thereby setting the stage for the development of civilization. “Our hope is that ProMytheUs would do the same” says Jha, a biology and mathematics major from Mumbai, India, “by being the fire that helps every individual recognize the talent within them and that that talent can help humanity take a forward step.”
Think you might have a talent for business? The site will lead you through a series of questions (“Do you always think of ways in which things can be done better?” “Does failure never stop you from trying new things?”) to help you find out.
Tramonto, an economics and mathematics double major from Chicago, says the goal is “to create an ecosystem of talent growth” where individuals can identify and have their core talents affirmed, and make connections with mentors and hiring managers who might otherwise never have found them.
“Some people can walk into a room and really sell themselves,” Jha says, “and others can’t.” She and Tramonto hope that ProMytheUs can level that playing field just a bit.
With help from Peter Abramo, director of the college’s Center for Entrepreneurship, the two have filed the necessary paperwork to register their company as 21^st Century Lions, LLC. They are continuing to hone the algorithms that run the back end of the site, working with a variety of departments on campus to encourage students to create profiles, and preparing for an on-campus on-boarding event to continue populating the database later this semester. All while working to complete their senior Independent Study projects, of course.
It’s a daunting task, but it’s a safe bet that when Jha and Tramonto went through the entrepreneurship questions on ProMytheUs, they both responded “strongly agree” to this one: “Does fear never stop you from trying?”
“I think it was the founder of LinkedIn,” Tramonto says with a smile, “who said, ‘If you’re completely comfortable when you’re ready to launch, you’ve waited too long.’”

Posted in News on February 27, 2018.