Thanks for using QuadJobs to connect to motivated college and graduate students near you. We’re excited to tell you about “posting to your Favorites”—it’ll make your life much easier.

Say you use the site to hire Susie to work at a marketing event. Susie shows up a few minutes early, having acquainted herself with your company and the event at which she’ll be working. She’s professional, friendly, and hardworking. You think Susie is great, and you want to be able to reach her quickly the next time you need extra hands.

Ta da! Enter the Favorites list.

All you have to do is award Susie that first job, give her a JobGPA rating of 4.0, and presto—she lands on your Favorites list.

When that last-minute need for Susie strikes, you’re going to post to your Favorites list, and in seconds, Susie (and the 5 other amazing QuadJobbers you’ve previously hired, liked, and rated 4.0) gets the All Points Bulletin (really, a text and an email) with all the deets for that late-breaking job. All 6 students get the info and immediately let you know they’re free. You choose the one you want to hire. Quick, easy, efficient… and resulting in the help you need.

You see why playing “Favorites” is our team’s favorite way to use QuadJobs. We use it constantly and you will too.

Betsy, Bridie and Andra

Co-Founders

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QuadJobs is an online platform connecting college and graduate students to local jobs.  From Saturday night babysitting to moving a couch to helping a local business during a busy time, students find flexible jobs that fit into whatever free time they have. By streamlining the employment connection between campus and community, QuadJobs unlocks jobs particularly well-suited for students’ busy, often changing schedules.  The platform tracks every job a student takes and gathers performance reviews.  Small jobs matter—they help a student network, earn income, and build a track record of work experience.  Local employers can hire with efficiency and confidence.

 

If you picture a typical tech entrepreneur, chances are a young, unencumbered tech nerd willing to work all the time pops to mind. He’s probably a He, a big fan of hoodies, a fluent coder, and a little jumpy from replacing sleep with caffeine.

I’m none of those things and neither are my partners, Andra and Bridie. Initially this gave us pause when we were starting QuadJobs, an online marketplace that matches college and graduate students with flexible odd jobs in the community surrounding their campus. Thankfully, we plowed through our self-doubt to bring our idea to life. Now we’ve come to believe that not fitting the “typical tech entrepreneur” mold may be the reason our business is off to a strong start.

1. We don’t work crazy hours, but we make the hours count.

I came to a tech startup with 20 years of finance experience. I’d climbed the ladder in investment banking, becoming a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank where I received thousands of applications each year from college students whose resumes looked so uniformly impressive they became almost indistinguishable (file under: QuadJobs inspiration). I led the global sales team and worked relentlessly. A few years ago, I left finance in search of something more entrepreneurial.

Unlike many startup CEOs, it’s rare that I’m not home for dinner. After long years (and long work-weeks) in banking, I’m no longer a believer that working around the clock is the best approach to getting big jobs done. Clocking out at a reasonable hour allows me to start the next day fresh.

2.  We’re older and our network is powerful.

Without question, the biggest asset we’ve had in starting QuadJobs has been our network, developed over a collective 50 plus years of professional experience. Our wonderful, successful friends–many of whom we’ve helped along the way–were key in getting us out of the gates. They continue to offer support in ways big and small. And since our friends have already “made it” across a spectrum of industries, we had a huge panel of sought-after advisers in our corner from day one. It would have been infinitely harder to get this business going in our twenties, when our friends were still finding their own way and we were less comfortable straight-up asking for help…all the time. Which you kind of have to do when you’re starting anything new, let alone in a space you’ve never worked in before.

3.  We’re not defined by our work.

A developer is two weeks late delivering a big project–I’m scrambling to get to the bottom of it, but I’m not letting it cost me sleep. It took me years to develop some tools to set boundaries around work and manage my own stress. I’m still working on them, but what a difference from when I used to take everything so seriously. I’m convinced that life experiences–perhaps especially the hardest of life experiences–give us greater perspective on what really matters at the end of the day. That perspective lets us approach work with a calmer mind. If I had started this business in my twenties, I would have gotten ulcers. Now it sometimes feels like a lot… but manageable.

4.  We’re the target market of our own product.

Women shape the economy as the chief consumer in most households. I’m the chief consumer in mine–and not only do I buy the bulk of what we all need, but I also create schedules, find babysitters, throw birthday parties, organize tag sales, pack boxes, line up tutors, drive donated items to GoodWill, you name it. Andra and Bridie are in the same boat. A lightbulb went off that if we could easily connect to great college students in our area who needed extra income, our lives would get a heckuva lot easier. Making people’s lives easier, helping students get a break and earn money, building the relationships between campus and community–those goals are the cornerstone of what we’re doing every day. And it grew out of a need we strongly felt in our own lives.

Our team doesn’t look like Silicon Valley and we didn’t just graduate from Google, but at the end of the day, we’re very capable of getting things done. My advice: If you’ve got a killer idea and you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t hold yourself back because you don’t look like other players in the space. There’s a lot to be gained by coming to the game with your own unique experiences.

Betsy O’Reilly is the CEO and a co-founder of QuadJobs. Prior to launching QuadJobs, she was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, where she led the global sales team.

 

From the beginning, we’ve relied on QuadJobs—on local student labor—to get our business off the ground. From our own experience, we know it works and that the students using our site are hardworking, reliable and grateful for opportunities. Here are a few of the many ways we’ve employed QuadJobbers with excellent results:

• I’ll never forget the first day we sent our newly minted “Q-Force” – the student sales team we hired through the site – to talk to potential employers in the community. Frankly it’s rare when something works so decisively well right off the bat, and there was some high-fiving at the office as we reviewed all the fresh leads the students generated in a short period of time. Since then, our Q-force has had a vital role in our growth and communication to potential employers. It was easy to narrow down the right students for the job using the site.
• While many stereotypes about millennials seem unfair, it’s completely true that most are fluent in social media. We’ve used QuadJobbers to manage Facebook pages and help us connect across various platforms. It’s second nature to them.
• We’ve hired QuadJobbers to pass out fliers, work events, and generate email campaigns. In July, we had a team of friendly students pass out popsicles and water bottles at a sidewalk sale… it was a nice way to engage with the community (and help people cool off).
• If your business could benefit from reaching students on campus, I strongly recommend using QuadJobs to find enthusiastic campus reps. We’ve successfully recruited thousands of students using reps hired through QuadJobs. Hiring students who are active in Greek Life or Athletics can be a great place to start, as they’re connected to larger networks.
• Starting a new business involves a lot of paperwork… and I know I couldn’t have managed without the tireless and always professional help of local accounting students whom I found through the site. These guys did a beautiful job keeping us organized and on track in our bookkeeping.
• Facing a tight deadline on a flyer we needed to mail, we posted for and quickly hired a local student photographer to capture the images we needed. In days, we had the images we needed—and the talented student we hired certainly didn’t charge us what a professional photographer would have. She was grateful for the opportunity to put her skills to use.
• We love our interns! In fact, we loved our first intern, Ashley Scaglione, so much that we convinced her to work for us full-time when she graduated last spring. Huge “get” for our team.  Now we’ve got a new crop of superstars hard at work.

I love talking to employers about what our students can do for their businesses. I’m passionate about the talents and abilities of QuadJobbers, not to mention the work ethic and professionalism they display every single day.

Betsy O’Reilly is the CEO and a co-founder of QuadJobs. Prior to launching QuadJobs, she was a Managing Director at Deutsche Bank, where she led the global sales team.