Hire power

Entrepreneur, March, 2005 by Jessica Hong

WHAT: website that matches prospective employees to hourly positions in their areas

WHO: Shawn Boyer, co-founder and CEO of SnagAJob.com Inc.

WHERE: Richmond, Virginia

WHEN: started in 2000

Searching for a decent job can get the best of us. Shawn Boyer, a former lawyer, realized this when his girlfriend solicited his help in finding an internship. When it came to looking for part-time work, it seemed as if sifting through newspapers or wandering door-to-door were the only options.

"I started to do the research," says Boyer, 33, "and there really wasn't anything out there [for non-salaried jobs]. You had the bigger career boards like Monster.com, but they didn't focus on it."

Boyer followed up with nine months of research, calling big companies like Bed Bath & Beyond, Boston Market, Chuck E. Cheese's and 7-Eleven, as well as high school and college campuses, to see where recruiters searched. Investors jumped on his pitch for SnagAJob.com--a site where hourly job-seekers can search for free while companies receive applicants' profiles at a monthly fee--and pooled several million dollars for the venture.

However, selling his idea to companies was more difficult. "You have to prove to them that you are actually going to have job-seeker traffic," says Boyer. So he began building a client base by advertising on college websites, online search portals, and at the YMCA and military bases. For his first eight months in business, he also offered companies a free 60-day trial of the service.

Each day, new candidates sign up with the site. Sales, which are now in the millions, soared 200 percent in 2001 and 2002, and 120 percent in 2004. "We consider ourselves to be brokers, basically," Boyer explains. "It's funny because you talk to individuals who are desperately looking for jobs, and then you talk to companies that are desperately looking for good people, and you think, 'Hey! We have what you need.'"