Inside Wonsulting: Building AI That Illuminates Career Paths

Featuring: Daniel Cho, Head of Product

Thoughtful Products in a Fast-Changing World

Imagine trying to navigate a city you have never visited. The streets are crowded. The signs point in five directions at once. And every stranger you ask gives you a different answer.

That is the job market for most people. They are wandering through it with hope, stress, and a phone battery at seven percent. One wrong turn and the day is ruined.

Building tools for people in that situation is a little like designing a map that works even when the streets keep rearranging themselves. It requires clarity, philosophy, and more than anything, someone who genuinely cares about the person holding the map. This is why we turn the lights on those building our products at Wonsulting. 

For this edition of Inside Wonsulting, we spoke with Daniel Cho, our Head of Product. What emerged was a clear picture of how the product development department thinks about user experience, ethical AI, and the responsibility of building tools that influence real life outcomes. His approach is steady, precise, and deeply considerate.

‍

1. When user behavior and user needs conflict, which one do you prioritize?

Daniel:

If user needs are not translating into user behavior, that's a fault on our end. We as a product, engineering, and design team need to think about why user behavior is not aligning with their needs.

Honestly? I think it is among our biggest priorities right now. We're trying to present best practices, but user behavior doesn't always align. Which prompted us to ask ourselves why and we're in the discovery and brainstorm process for that.

‍

2. Has there been a time you had to protect user experience against business pressure?

Daniel:

Yes, actually. It's easy to get lost in making decisions where we think it'll lead to clear business metric impact, which can be the right move at times.

What's harder to always remember, but ultimately more valuable, is to remember who we're doing this for, and why we started in the first place. Great products serve people, not KPIs.

‍

3. What makes WonsultingAI's recommendations trustworthy?

Daniel:

All of our products and features that make up our WonsultingAI suite basically come from our services. And our services stem from Jon and Jerry just helping people and doing workshops, and most importantly, finding a ton of success helping people actually land jobs as they did so.

We are also doing our best to be thoughtful about the way AI is integrated into our product, even down to the way we engineer our prompts. WonsultingAI is the digital version of years of coaching notes scribbled in the margins.

‍

4. Who holds responsibility when AI-generated output negatively impacts a user's job prospects?

Daniel:

I think it's 100% the creator of said AI product or feature or whatever it is. To me, it's not enough to just put something out there, you need to put something out there that has been tested, validated, and agreed by others is worth using and adds value, not takes it away.

‍

5. What's the bar for saying an AI feature is "safe enough" to release?

Daniel:

When the following things are true at a bare minimum: We've put the work in to understand the main ways it can go wrong, we've implemented something concrete to reduce those risks, we have a process to catch and fix problems after launch.

Outside of that, there are established best practices to follow, and developing best practices to keep our eyes on.

‍

6. What's your philosophy on preventing AI from reinforcing inequalities in the job market?

Daniel:

My philosophy is that it shouldn't reinforce inequality. It should help to democratize access to the same jobs, information, and tools that used to be gatekept or only available to a small group of people.

Also, it should shine a light on where inequalities exist in hiring and career progression so they can be challenged and reduced instead of remaining hidden.

‍

7. If data suggests an algorithm performs worse for certain groups, what obligations do we have?

Daniel:

We want to always provide more value for more people. So if an algorithm performs worse for certain groups, we have an obligation to fix that. At minimum, it shouldn't perform worse for them than for anyone else. Ideally, it should be increasing value and opportunity for every group.

‍

8. What's your stance on how much user data is appropriate to collect for personalization?

Daniel:

We should collect only data that has a clear purpose in making recommendations, action plans, or next steps more useful for that specific user.

And only data that informs us on what works or doesn't across thousands of job searches and patterns from users across varying goals and backgrounds.

‍

9. Where do you personally draw the line between personalization and privacy?

Daniel:

The truth is that personalization and privacy are sometimes at odds in a zero-sum fashion. On average, giving more information will help introduce better personalization, but that goes against privacy in its purest sense.

What I can say is that I believe the buck stops with the companies, institutions, and organizations that people trust and choose to give their information to, to be above reproach in protecting their users' privacy and not violating that trust.

‍

10. If you had to write one sentence that captures your product philosophy for WonsultingAI, what would it be?

Daniel:

A data-driven, insight-rich engine that shows you exactly where you stand and what to do next with every tool you need at every point.

‍

Conclusion: Product Built With Intention

Conversations with Daniel reveal a product philosophy grounded in responsibility, empathy, and precision. It felt like speaking with the guy who rearranges the furniture in a room so visitors don't trip.

His principles guide the decisions that shape WonsultingAI. It is what ensures that our tools remain helpful, ethical, and genuinely helpful to every job seeker at their respective job search stage. 

Wondering how these tools can help you? 

Try them at WonsultingAI. There's a free version that lasts forever.