Three Greenwich women are firm believers in breaking the idea that you need a job to get experience and you need experience to get a job.
Ten months ago, Andra Newman, Betsy O”™Reilly and Bridie Clark Loverro, entrepreneurs with backgrounds ranging from human resources and recruitment to journalism and banking, decided to develop an online tool that offers college students a boost on their resumes by helping them get job experience despite their limited schedules.
That tool is QuadJobs, an online job board serving as a platform for small-business owners and homeowners who need to hire an extra hand on short notice.
“We”™ve got a group of college students who probably now more than ever need to work some type of job throughout college,” said O”™Reilly, CEO of QuadJobs. “College kids in general need money, but the problem is their schedule. A lot of college kids can”™t take permanent part-time work. They don”™t have the hours to work 20 hours a week at Starbucks. So they need flexible options in employment.”
Similar to the networking website LinkedIn, where a segment of a user”™s profile is dedicated to employer and co-worker reviews, QuadJobs has scalable ratings that measure students”™ work ethic.
“It”™s the idea of a job GPA,” Newman said. “It”™s a massive differentiator and it”™s something that”™s a cornerstone of the business. As a student on QuadJobs, every odd job that I do is recorded ”“ not just recorded, but a good percentage of those will have reviews attached to them. So when I graduate, I can go into that first job interview and in addition to showing all my academic credentials, I can actually say, ”˜Here”™s my job GPA.”™”
QuadJobs will send interns to recruit students at seven colleges in Westchester and Fairfield counties ”” Fairfield University, Norwalk Community College, Manhattanville College, Sacred Heart University, SUNY Purchase, the University of Connecticut at Stamford and the University of Bridgeport. Students can begin signing up for a QuadJobs account when quadjobs.com goes live Aug. 15.
The database will open up to employers starting in late September. For $8.95 a month, QuadJobs subscribers will have the ability to sift through students”™ resumes and reviews and identify candidates to hire on the spot. Employers also have the ability to post job listings, whether for full-time, part-time, one-time or seasonal positions.
The startup idea has received constructive feedback from the community, Loverro said. She said the state of Connecticut has been a helpful partner and resource for many small businesses and startups, and that the QuadJobs founders are just learning the landscape, tapping into the state”™s resources and seeing the benefit of launching in Greenwich.
“We met with people in our community and have gotten a pulse of what people are looking for so we could answer their needs,” Loverro said. “It”™s been helpful to have focus groups and also sit down with various business owners and talk to them about what they need in their business and how we can help them.”
The company was set to close a round of seed funding July 31 with an expected $750,000 in contributions from private and professional investors to help develop the job board website. The goal is to eventually roll out the concept nationally.
