School’s out soon, and perfect timing! All of those students and recent grads will be looking for work and turning to Campus Job, the largest online marketplace connecting college students with part time jobs, internships, and, most recently, full-time jobs.
It’s a great idea: not all students know what they want to do, post-graduation, so here’s their chance to test the waters – and have something to put on their resumes, post-graduation. And most of the postings are actual paying jobs or paid internships.
For recent grads, hey, companies who post on Campus Job understand what ‘recent grad’ means. For a change.
Cofounders Liz Wessel and JJ Fleigelman tell us about this round of funding and how it helps when your investors know about the service first-hand – and no, they’re not vying with college students for jobs, but many do have offspring or friends of offspring who have used to service, and nothing sells – or attracts investors – like great word-of-mouth.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise? Was it seed, Series A, B, etc?
Campus Job just closed $7.8M in Series A funding (bringing their total funding to $9.1M), led by General Catalyst along with a mix of new and existing investors including Index Ventures, Box Group, SV Angel, Slow Ventures, LererHippeau Ventures, and others.
Tell us about your product or service.
Campus Job is the largest online marketplace connecting college students with jobs and internships. Student users log in and input their skills into a simple form, and then are only shown jobs that they are actually qualified for. Businesses can post job listings at every campus in the country with the click of the button, and pay only a few dollars per applicant, based on the targeting they choose (for instance: school, major, or GPA).
What inspired you to start the company?
We started Campus Job because we think finding a job should be about what you can do, and not just about who you know. By making it easier for hiring managers to sort through unqualified applicants and saving them time, our hope is that we can make the entire hiring process more democratic for both the job seeker and the employer.
How is it different?
Unlike job boards, Campus Job only shows students jobs for which they’re qualified, and only shows employers students they may actually want to hire. Furthermore, jobs on Campus Job aren’t left stale, because businesses pay a per-applicant-fee, and jobs get automatically taken down as soon as a business has hit their desired number of applicants. The median time it takes to fill each job listing is only 52 hours and many positions are filled within a matter of minutes.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
The number of students enrolled in a full-time college or university grows each year, with approximately 22 million post-secondary school students in the US. More than 80% of them will work part time during school, and we believe the gap (of 20%) is filled by students who partake in summer internship programs. Furthermore, unless you’re definitely going to graduate school, pretty much every student wants to get a full-time job after school. Now that we’ve added full-time roles to the site, we can target every single post-secondary student in the US.
Which positions are most in demand at the moment, that you’ve notice?
At the moment, summer internships and full-time jobs are definitely seeing the most demand from students, since summer breaks and graduation are approaching, and they’re concerned about getting hired. For summer internships, it’s been fascinating how much more students care about the type of job it is (and how good it will look on their resumes) than whether it is paid, though more than 90% of the jobs posted on Campus Job are paid.
What’s your business model?
All revenue is generated from businesses seeking applicants. Employers can post a job for free, and only pay when they receive an applicant who matches the qualifications they list. Campus Job uses its own algorithms to determine a unique price-per-applicant for each job listing based on how specific the listing is, and how many applicants the business wants to receive.
What was the funding process like?
Campus Job completed its seed funding round in about two weeks, raising $1M in August 2014. We completed our Series A after completing the Y-Combinator incubator in San Francisco. Raising the Series A was also a rather quick process.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
We had more investors offer to invest than we would have ever expected, so the biggest challenges were deciding who we wanted to work with, and that we couldn’t work with all of them.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Many VCs are parents or siblings of college students and many even knew college students had gotten jobs via Campus Job, and told their relatives. So, it was really awesome to have so many investors tell us they knew someone who got a job on Campus Job, or that they heard our site was buzzing on college campuses, or that they invested in a company that used us successfully to hire students. Big lesson: it really helps to have a product that works and helps people, and that users therefore want to talk about.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We plan to grow our NYC-based team extensively, and really focus on building out the product to better suggest jobs for students based on data science. We also hope to get more jobs on the site, and of course, more students signing up.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Be scrappy and don’t give up.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Campus Job’s focus over the near term is hiring. The company is looking to add developers, data analysts, and sales members to its team in New York. They will work on improving Campus Job’s matches to help find even more job opportunities for college students to launch amazing careers.
What’s your favorite NY bar, after a long day on the job?
The past 8 months since launching hasn’t really afforded us the time to hit many happy hours. That being said, now that we’re expanding the team and won’t each have to do ten jobs, we look forward to discovering many NY bars and hopefully will have an answer for you soon!
