Not long ago, Shawn Boyer was a transactional attorney in Washington, D.C. He earned a salary and made a good living. Life seemed to be following a nice, normal path until the day he decided to quit his job to channel all of his energy into creating a new dot-com for hourly employment.
While in D.C., Boyer had a friend who was looking for a part-time job/internship. She asked him to help her with her search. After searching online, in newspapers and by calling around he discovered that the seemingly
simple task of finding a part-time/hourly job was actually quite the opposite. The part-time/hourly job market is known to be inconsistent, constantly growing and extremely disorganized. What was out there to help people in need of part-time/hourly work? Boyer found nothing — and out of this discovery, SnagAJob.com was born.
Boyer left D.C. to research and collaborate with his father on his new idea: an online recruiting website for hourly positions. They outsourced the initial building of SnagAJob.com and then opened for business in Williamsburg, VA. Shawn and his father quickly recognized the need for a more extensive internal staff. “Most of our initial staff commuted from Richmond, and there were more people there that we wanted to join with us, so we hoped it was only a matter of time before we could move to the Richmond area,” explained Shawn.
SnagAJob.com has settled into new offices in the Innsbrook Corporate Park in the West End. Boyer noted the benefits he experienced relocating and establishing his business in Henrico County. “For us at SnagAJob.com, it really is all about the people, and we are so fortunate to have great people. With Fortune 500 companies and great creative talent continually spinning off and forming shops, Richmond has a great pool of talent. Also, people here seem to enjoy living balanced lives, and we feel that is extremely important as well,” said Boyer. In addition, Boyer believes that the Richmond area in and of itself provides a selling point for national recruiting efforts. The lower cost of living, lifestyle and convenient location all make Richmond an easy sell to potential and existing employees.
Building upon the initial success SnagAJob.com has experienced, Boyer is taking advantage of the present opportunity to aggressively expand and gain broader awareness. SnagAJob.com recently secured $9 million to facilitate the expansion process. There are currently around 30 people working at SnagAJob.com, and Boyer wishes to quadruple his staff in 2007. “We’ve hired recruiters to help us accomplish our goals, and we intend to ramp up every part of our staff, from sales to tech services to management to client services.”
In addition to increasing its staff, SnagAJob.com is investing in comprehensive marketing and advertising ventures. “We want to become a household name so that any hourly employer or potential employee can be pointed in our direction,” said Boyer. In order to meet this goal, SnagAJob.com is rolling out television, outdoor, transit and online campaigns, as well as participating in a viral marketing campaign. There are already more than 100,000 hourly and part-time work postings on SnagAJob.com, and Boyer projects total monthly site visits will increase from 1.5 to 9.5 million within the next two to three years. The closest competition comes from walk-ins and newspaper ads. The opportunity to take and keep the lead in the hourly/part-time job search market is enormous, especially in today’s technologically advanced society. SnagAJob.com is positioned to set the standard for hourly online recruitment.
While popular sites such as Monster, CareerBuilder and HotJobs are in the online recruiting competitive set, SnagAJob.com recognizes it has found a niche outside of the mass full-time job search category. Its current list of clients includes Target, Jiffy Lube, The Home Depot, Wendy’s, Burger King, Caribou Coffee and many others. “Sites like Monster.com are more for full-time, salaried positions. Our site is specifically for hourly jobs. If there was one thing I would want people to know about SnagAJob.com it would be that we are the megamall for both employees seeking hourly work and employers seeking hourly employees.” said Boyer. SnagAJob.com hopes its increased funding and marketing efforts will give job seekers a new motivation to shop.
