I am just back from Snagajob’s conference, HourMinds, in lovely Charleston, South Carolina. Just as the conference name connotes, the conference focused on how organizations attract and manage the hourly workforce. During 2016, Snagajob acquired PeopleMatter, a SaaS workforce management platform, and as Snagajob and PeopleMatter are now one company, employees and customers from the combined organization were at the event.
Their mission is to create a world where people can get work wherever they want. And because of their efforts, Snagajob amassed about 80 million hourly workers that registered for its Marketplace, and the combined organization provides services and solutions for about 300,000 employer locations. Their main industries are restaurants, retail, and hospitality.
Snagajob’s solid commitment to the hourly worker was evident throughout their conference, both by their superb speakers and topics, and in the way it develops, and continues to enhance, its solutions and services.
Discussion themes throughout the conference were:
- Putting employees first
- Transformation
- Employee engagement
- Hiring practices
- Candidate/employee experience
- Recruiting the hourly worker
- The future of work
In addition, there were organizations reminding us of the value of giving back. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation presented its program, “Impact Hiring,” aimed at young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor at work.
I also was very interested in Snagajob’s growth strategy. The company is developing a unified platform, which will include the best features from the Snagajob and the PeopleMatter platforms, and continues to enhance the user experience, the job-matching algorithms, and its mobile app.
A particularly exciting new direction from Snagajob is its HUSL service and mobile app solution, which is in private beta in Richmond, Va. HUSL is meant to tap into the on-demand hourly workforce and solve the hourly workforce scheduling problem within Snagajob’s target verticals. HUSL will benefit both workers and employers. Workers will benefit by not having to make a long-term commitment to an employer, by being able to have flexible schedules, by getting better than average pay, and by receiving training. Employers benefit by getting quick access to trained workers on an as-needed basis, and by not having to go through the process of recruiting, screening and all the ensuing paperwork and expense needed to hire those workers. Of course, there are several challenges to overcome, including worker training to meet the needs of the different employers, marketing, and just growing the business. However, as Snagajob already has strong relationships with large employers in its target markets and has a unique perspective on market demand by region, the company is in good position to scale this solution to other areas in the U.S.
Snagajob l PeopleMatter really understands the hourly job market, both from the employer and worker perspectives, and provides solutions that best meet their needs, and may perhaps disrupt the market.
–Daria Friedman, Principal Analyst, Talent Acquisition, Brandon Hall Group
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