Campus Job is an online marketplace for students to find part-time jobs during the school year, and for businesses to find students to hire for short-term work. The site is set up at more than 7,000 post-secondary schools nationwide, with students already registered at nearly 500 U.S. campuses, including all eight Ivy League colleges, the top 25 business and engineering schools, and dozens of technical colleges, art schools and community colleges nationwide.
And what investor doesn’t have a portfolio company that doesn’t need to hire students, from time to time? Which might help to explain why a group of notable investors wrote the checks so quickly.
Jobs available on the site include everything from campus brand managers for Uber, Lyft and T-Mobile, Wings team members for Red Bull, freelance writers for TheDishh, graphic designers for Metaio augmented reality and student marketing ambassadors for the New York Times. Plus freelancers for startups, tutors and bartenders.
And for Campus Jobs, too, of course.
In less than three weeks, businesses have also posted more than 2,000 part-time jobs listings, with more than 1,000 new listings added each week.
Co-founder & CEO (and former Google Product Marketing Manager) Liz Wessel tells us how they got the job done so quickly.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Our seed round came to $965K, and our investors include Box Group, Lerer Ventures, Female Founders Fund (“F Cubed”), Red Sea Ventures and Kal Vepuri.
What was the funding process like?
We didn’t start fundraising until late July, which we were warned was prime season for investors to go on vacation. However, from our first investor pitch in late July, when we started only intending to raise $450k, we were immediately convinced to raise more. Within two and a half weeks, we were well oversubscribed. We ended with a final round of about $1MM with a group of investors who we’re insanely honored and privileged to be working with. (It’s worth noting that we’ve been following many of our investors on Twitter and in the news for years, so we were even a bit star-struck going into some of the meetings!)
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Honestly, our biggest challenge was being oversubscribed and deciding on the right mix of investors/investments. We wanted to work with all of the investors who we met, but we didn’t want to take more money than we needed.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Most of the investors who we pitched told us that their portfolio companies needed to hire students (for various reasons), but were having a really hard time. When they told us that most of their portfolios would likely become customers of ours, it was clear that they didn’t need too much convincing. It also helped that almost every one of our investors had had part-time jobs during college and therefore understood the importance of the business.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Our first product for Campus Job is a marketplace that connects students with part-time jobs and businesses with students to hire for short-term work. We have really exciting plans to build this into something much bigger down the road, and we’re aiming to soon be the main connector between businesses and students. We strongly believe that if we focus on helping students while providing value to businesses, we’ll quickly grow into something great.
What’s the most unusual job you’ve seen posted, so far?
The most unusual job that we’ve seen a business post was for a cleaning staff at a campus-based religious organization at Wisconsin University (and they got multiple applicants within an hour!) We’ve seen plenty of on-campus local jobs posted, from gelato servers to graphic designers for a university-website, but seeing a university organization post a role for a student to clean their offices was a bit surprising.
What’s the most popular job?
Our own company’s campus rep listing has had the most applicants of any role on the site, which we believe shows that students really believe in Campus Job and want to be a part of it! Our campus rep program is fun and engaging, and it gives students real-world marketing experience (not to mention good pay, if they hit their targets). That being said, other jobs have come in close second, and we’re excited about those as well.
What was your first job in NYC?
It’s actually a tie. There was one listing posted for a New York Times campus rep on the same day as a listing for a street team member for Minibar Delivery, a startup we’re excited about and use ourselves.