SnagAJob’s Shawn Boyer snags top honors

July 21st, 2008 by JD Kathuria

Shawn Boyer, the founder and CEO of Richmond, Va.-based SnagAJob.com, was recently named the “National Small Business Person of the Year” by the Small Business Administration. Boyer, 36, was recognized for identifying a business niche when a friend had trouble finding an internship and turning that idea into a multi-million dollar web site focused on the part-time and hourly employee job segment. In the following Q&A, Boyer shares a few secrets to SnagAJob’s success, which include the company recently being named one of the 50 Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America.

SnagAJob.com just turned eight, congratulations — what’s your secret?

Shawn Boyer: A heavy focus on people. That is something that we have been very maniacal about from the beginning. We want to bring on bright people; we want to bring on good, solid people, people who are easy to work with, collaborative people who take an approach to life of wanting to get better every day.

How have you managed to attract quality people?

Shawn Boyer: One aspect — hiring great people attracts other great people. That’s why it is so critical early on to hire really solid people. Once you have done that, they’re going to know others, whether or not they are direct friends or whether it’s through several different connections removed. The other thing is building the presence of your organization within the community where you are trying to recruit folks. SnagAJob does a lot of things within our community, both volunteer work, as well as sponsorships of different athletic events. We also sponsor a concert pavilion here in town.

Where were you before starting SnagAJob.com?

Shawn Boyer: I was a transactional attorney up in D.C. for a big New York-based firm. I was doing something completely different, and I had a friend who was looking for an internship position. She asked me if I would go online — this was in April of ’99 — to look for a job for her. I went online and realized there wasn’t too much in terms of internships, and there wasn’t anything for hourly positions. So one thing led to another. I left there, moved to Richmond and started the company, and we’ve been doing it since then.

How long did it take you to do your business plan?

Shawn Boyer: I started it in May of 1999 and to get it to the point where I was willing to go give it to somebody else was January of 2000. Again, part of that time I was still working, so I worked until about August of ’99 at the firm. Probably a good five months of hard time devoted to the business plan and the research.

Could you ever have imagined the success you’d have today?

Shawn Boyer: It’s a paradox. On the one hand, I thought that it could be super successful; there was no one else out there doing this. If I was looking for a part-time job or an hourly job, it would make sense for me to go online, and if an employer were looking to hire somebody, it could be the most cost-effective method they could utilize.

Still, I didn’t realize what a big impact we could have on people. We’ve got an audience of 4.5 million hourly workers coming to the site every month. We get emails from job seekers saying that we have changed their lives. On the employer side, we’ve enabled employers to open new locations more quickly than they might otherwise have been able to do so, and we’ve reduced their recruiting budgets by 50 percent.

How did you attract so many top investors back in 2006?

Shawn Boyer: First, we built the business to a certain size so that people would actually be interested in it. Then, we hired an investment banking firm to start generating interest from outside investors. We ended up sending out our “confidential memorandum” to 40 different firms. We did conference calls and we did a road show where we met with probably 20 different firms. Fortunately for us, at the end of the day, we ended up with 11 different term sheets.

I would encourage anybody who is going to go raise money to hire an investment banking firm. Make sure you do a great job in your research concerning what investment bank you are going to choose. For us, that is what enabled us to get the best investors. They had connections out there, they’re solid people that I trust, and we’ve become good friends over time.

Where do you see SnagAJob.com in three to five years?

Shawn Boyer: We want to continue to operate specifically within the hourly space. It represents 60 percent of America’s total working population. We would like to build out the types of industries that we serve including: retail, hospitality, dining, certain business-service sectors, healthcare, office admin, etc.. We also want to continue to build out the suite of offerings that we offer employers to make their job easier in recruiting and hiring people – becoming more of a platform as opposed to just a job site. We want to expand internationally; we have a plan to go into Canada within the next 10 to 12 months and then within the next three years to go into both Western Europe and Asia. On the job-seeker side, we plan to continue to build out a suite of tools that we offer to them as well so it becomes much more of a community for hourly workers.

Anything else you would like to add?

Shawn Boyer: One of our goals has always been to be ranked one of the greatest 50 places to work. It goes back to the people aspect. I feel like if we’re doing a great job of bringing the best people in here and then we provide them with a phenomenal culture to operate in once they get here, the company will continue to be successful, both for ourselves, our clients and for job seekers. We were just named one of the top three greatest places to work in America among small companies by the same institute that compiles the Fortune list, and that’s a great honor that will continue to help drive the future success of the company.

Interview with Shawn Boyer conducted by JD Kathuria

Read more interviews here: http://blog.executivebiz.com/category/interviews/

Tags: Shawn Boyer, SnagAJob
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