Westport moms-turned-entrepreneurs Runa Knapp and Jasmine Silver are the co-founders of FoundHer, a recruiting company focused on helping women return to the workforce in financial services positions after a career break. We caught up with them to talk about the recruitment industry, corporate culture, shifts in the workplace post-Covid and more.
How did you meet?
Jasmine Silver (JS): “Both Runa and I had successful careers in New York City. I was a matrimonial and commercial litigator and Runa was a CPA in the financial services audit practice at KPMG. After my law firm did not offer paid maternity leave, I left the corporate world in New York City to spend more time with my children in Westport and vowed to advocate for women and mothers in the workplace in my next role. Through preschool events with my kids, I met Runa, who had just left her full-time role to raise her kids. When talking at our kids’ events, we realized there was a void for mothers like us – eager to return to work but also seeking a work/life balance.”
How daunting was starting FoundHer? And isn’t the recruitment industry dominated by a handful of “behemoth” agencies, or is there really room for independents?
Runa Knapp: “I think starting any kind of business is daunting at first, but that’s part of being an entrepreneur. When we launched our business in 2019, our company was named Connectalent, and we placed both men and women looking for more flexibility in their jobs. Once companies realized employees could work from anywhere, we had an influx of women, many of them working mothers, wanting more flexibility and work/life balance.
“So in 2022 we rebranded to FoundHer and narrowed our focus to connect women and mothers passionate about a corporate culture that shared their values with corporate clients who supported a flexible working environment.”
JS: “We’re not a big agency and because of that we can provide more individualized white-glove service, and our clients appreciate that and come to us for that reason. We’re nimble. We have a small supporting group of freelancers (many are return-to-work moms) who help support us in our operations, and because we’re return-to-work mothers ourselves, we have a unique ability to connect with our candidates and clients. Most importantly, our niche of placing women in financial services roles is not always a focus for larger recruiting firms, so we certainly have an edge there.”
Do you have plans to move beyond the financial services area – or, putting it another way, are there opportunities beyond this?
RK: “Finance is a large industry in this area, so it makes sense for us to be placing talent in the financial services industry. And since men still dominate roles in this industry, we’re focused on adding more women to roles in finance. We have worked with a number of other industries, including law firms, management consulting firms, nonprofits and marketing firms and are always happy to do so, but we’ve found that financial services companies seek our services most often and are enthusiastic about our mission to add more women to their teams.”
Where do the profits actually lie? Do you charge both employers and applicants for your introductory service?
JS: “We don’t charge candidates to work with us. Like a typical recruiting firm, our corporate clients pay us to source for and fill their open roles.”
In a nutshell, how would you say you’ve modernized the traditional hiring process?
JS: “(By) providing working mothers with opportunities to get back into the workforce or find opportunities closer to home. Because we were return-to-work mothers ourselves, we can empathize with women with a career gap reentering the workplace or those seeking flexibility and provide these women the opportunity to pursue roles they might not have felt confident to pursue otherwise.
“On the flip side, we provide our clients with untapped talent, candidates they would not otherwise find through traditional recruiting firms or through social media outlets like LinkedIn.”
Lastly, in the ‘About Us’ link on your website, you place “diversity” and “efficiency” in the same sentence. Why that connection?
RK: “In our case, diversity means adding more women to the workforce. So yes, ‘diversity’ and ‘efficiency’ are compatible. Ask any working mother about balance and efficiency: You have to have these skill sets. We’ve found women – specifically working moms – make great employees because of their multitasking abilities, empathy, collaboration and decisiveness.
“Small businesses love people who can both strategize and execute. And women in financial services are in high demand, whether it’s accounting, back-office operations (or) other similar roles.”
