The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.
Name: Urban Interns
Quick Pitch: Urban Interns is a national marketplace that connects growing companies with people looking for part-time jobs, internships and freelance positions.
Genius Idea: Online job sites date back to the early days of the web, but most focus on helping companies and job seekers fill and find full-time positions. However, in the aftermath of the economic downturn, more and more growing companies need to fill temporary posts just as much, if not more, than full-time jobs.
Enter Urban Interns, a site that emerged in early 2009 to satisfy small and medium-sized businesses’ needs around intern, part-time and freelance positions.
The site caters to companies and job seekers in large metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, with more city releases planned for the immediate future. It’s meant to be both a low-cost solution for businesses and a convenient tool for part-timers to get discovered and find more short-term work.
Intern and part-time job seekers can search for open temporary positions or use the site a build an employer-searchable profile that includes their photo, bio and links to social networks. Employers pay $49.95 for each listing; the one-time fee also gets them access to the site’s job seeker database for 30 days.
Co-founder Cari Sommer says that its users skew younger and its businesses need to fill social posts, which means there’s lots of college students looking for internships and plenty of social media work to be had. In fact, 50% of listed posts are related to social media, she says. Temporary event, sales and business development work is also readily available.
Sommer was reluctant to share revenue figures, so we can’t say how well the startup is doing on the business side of things. It would seem, though, that Urban Interns has a promising future, considering its growth and database of job seekers. The business has matured from a bootstrapped idea isolated in New York to an angel-funded startup serving 12 cities and roughly 10,000 job seekers.
Series Supported by Microsoft BizSpark
The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark, a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
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