News / Start-ups
Graduate launches free student job portal
A Bristol uni graduate has introduced a new service that matches students with part-time and one-off work, free to use for both employers and employees. Wurkrs.com will find opportunities to fit students’ availability, whether a one-off job helping with gardening or regular bar work, while employers have the opportunity to access a skilled pool of workers, helping to fill gaps and cover last-minute sickness.
In the face of rising student debt burdens, many now choose to work whilst studying – in 2013 over two thirds were working part time to fund their studies.
“Whilst at university in Bristol, I found that to find part-time work I had to trudge around Cabot Circus and physically hand out CVs,” says Sam Hyams, who came up with the concept. “At the same time, I knew that there were businesses all over the city struggling to find quality part-time staff. You had this huge pool of hard-working, intelligent, but poor students who needed work. On the other side you had small businesses that could not afford to use job agencies to fill their part-time or one-off jobs. There had to be a better way to connect the two sides, and so wurkrs.com was born.”
He hopes that the site will remain free-to-use, even as it grows: “My primary aim is to help students to fund their studies, and to make it easy for local employers to find quality part-time staff.” He concedes that he may eventually use limited advertising and charge small fees for larger employers to maintain the site but aims to keep this to a minimum: ” I believe it should primarily be a fantastic free tool for students and SMEs all over the UK”.
The site is designed for ease of use, with variable location for time spent both at home and at uni, automatically updated CV and a wide variety of jobs: “We have had everything from a kitchen porter position at the Bavarian Beerhouse, to decorating a bedroom complete with a large hand-painted picture on one wall, to a social media marketing assistant for a women’s sports brand, to helping with A-level homework,” says Sam.
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