#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Jessica Charlsen, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Job Share Connect
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Connecting Employees with Job Share Partners, Alternatives to Full-Time Work
Job Share Connect is a digital platform that provides a way for employees and employers to explore the world of job sharing. Their software enables interested candidates to look for job share opportunities and to match with potential job share partners. Co-Founder and Co-CEO Jessica Charlsen told us about what led her to Job Share Connect, the benefits of job sharing, and how policymakers can better support entrepreneurs through public policies that support accessing capital outside traditional technology hubs.
Tell us about your background. What led you to Job Share Connect?
Job Share Connect was founded from my experiences and personal frustrations with the lack of a proper work-life balance in the typical corporate setting. With a background in marketing and advertising, I have worked in startups, agencies, and major corporate businesses with rigorous schedules and long hours. As my three kids grew older, this intense work lifestyle became unmanageable. There wasn’t a good option for me to continue on my projected career path—that I loved—and make the time I needed for my family—who I also loved. Around the same time, I was lucky enough to meet my future co-founder, Jina Hwang. Having specialized in talent management in both corporate and consulting settings, she was also facing the same issues with professional growth in her career after giving birth to twins.
We began looking into different work models to see what the possible solutions were that we weren’t considering, and that’s when we came across job sharing. In this model, two people share the role, responsibility, and salary for a full-time position, so both employers and employees win because you get continual coverage and effective load management. For example, this could look like working Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Wednesday, both job share partners work and there is a transitional meeting where I would share all the relevant updates and expectations for the rest of the week. From there, the job share partner would take over for Thursday and Friday, and provide updates at the end of the week. The cycle repeats continually every week.
To gather more information on the model’s success, we have talked to numerous job share partners and users. Our interviewees consistently responded that job sharing was a complete game-changer. They could continue other career paths, be promoted together, and lead teams together without feeling obligated to sacrifice their personal lives. Given how successful it seemed, we began to wonder why job sharing was not as popular or mainstream in America as it is in Europe and Australia.
The main obstacles came down to the job sharer finding the right partner at the right time, and the company onboarding this new type of work. We felt, however, that both these issues could be addressed through standardization, beginning with education and raising awareness about job sharing. This was our impetus for starting Job Share Connect.
Could you walk us through what it is like to be a user on your platform? What does it allow you to do, and what does the platform enable in the long term?
Since neither Jina nor I had coding or technical expertise, we initially built our platform using no-code solutions like Survey Monkey and Google Forms as we developed our matching processes. Through advertisements of our job share opportunities and a general presence on social media, we grew our talent pool to hundreds of people. When there is a role, we source and take candidates through a proprietary matching process. Once we knew what we wanted to build, we were able to find a CTO and leverage funding acquired from a variety of sources, including the Nebraska prototype grant. COVID has had a significant impact on our path to market. We’ve pivoted to adjust to the rapidly changing needs, but have ultimately settled not far from where we started—as a way for companies to recruit and retain top talent. Today, we’re getting ready to officially launch our platform where users can set up profiles that highlight skills, abilities, resumes, and other essential job search information. Combined with our current directory of job sharing opportunities and matching process, this will allow users to find compatible opportunities in the “eHarmony'' equivalent model of job sharing.
The majority of people on our platform are 35 to 55-year-old women who are either trying to re-enter the workforce or who are trying to scale back their current full-time roles. In addition, we have a fair amount of entrepreneurs who have a startup or technology firm on the side, and people who have recently retired but would like consistent work, without a full-time schedule.
We’ve found that there are a number of systemic barriers for founders building their business if they originate outside traditional tech hubs. This is especially true for women founders, as they are not favored by traditional investment capital. How do policymakers need to be thinking about facilitating access to capital necessary for building a new and innovative product?
Access to capital is an issue we’ve been tirelessly dealing with for three years now. It is really hard to get your first customers in these smaller, more traditional markets, and I think finding customers is more important for success than raising capital. Even with funding, we need companies that are ready to build with us. Often, corporate innovation efforts are industry-focused, and until recently, there wasn’t as much of a focus on trying innovative efforts around their biggest resource, their labor force. Due to COVID-19, the global talent crisis has been hugely impacted by the loss of women in the workforce, and the possibility (and ease) of remote employment has been realized. This has led to more companies starting to explore new ways to maximize their local workforce.
Policies can and should definitely help private companies become the first customer for many startups. Legal protections for startups, such as heavily enforced guaranteed payment are things that can help ensure the survival of these companies. There are important distinctions that must be made between larger companies and smaller startups, as the slightest of setbacks affect startups disproportionately more than established companies. Moreover, having a network of past entrepreneurs and founders that can provide advice on navigating decisions, such as negotiating deals with venture capitalists, would be extremely helpful. Similar to many other startups around the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, we have struggled with finding the right partners to help us grow, but also remain autonomous. We’ve felt incredibly lucky to have government resources that establish this public support network for aspiring non-tech hub entrepreneurs.
Are there any local, state, or federal startup issues that you think should receive more attention from policymakers?
Having more family-friendly policies that emphasize work-life balance would be beneficial for all companies, including Job Share Connect. Compared to the U.S., Europe has far better part-time work options and labor/worker protections; for example, if you work somewhere for 26 weeks, you're guaranteed the ability to switch to part-time work. This is where job sharing is also a solution because someone can work 30 hours and still get a good enough benefits package to go work on a startup on the side, take care of kids after school, or take care of sick parents. Today more than ever, talent is re-calibrating what's important to them.
I think policies that allow people to have consistent and consecutive flexible work will enable, not only startups but an array of companies to grow and find the talent they need. In our own work, we're looking at bringing on an employee who is based in Atlanta, and all of a sudden we realized we would have to navigate so many different barriers and requirements to hire her. This is a huge issue; for example, I would have to go through the process of registering my company in Atlanta. I don’t have three days to spend trying to figure out how to properly register a company working across multiple states. The result is that lots of companies aren’t able to access talent as employees in states they aren’t registered, who would likely benefit from the growth of job sharing. Standardizing regulations across different jurisdictions to make the process of hiring talent from different places would be extremely beneficial. It ensures that founders can easily navigate across different legal and financial environments without having to consistently hunt for new resources, policies, and employees.
What are your goals for Job Share Connect moving forward?
The future of Job Share Connect is to become a national platform for talent to find their job share partner and look for job share opportunities. We want to standardize job sharing so anywhere you’d search for a job, you’d see full-time, part-time, job share opportunities. Having this opportunity to stay engaged on a career path and get back time in life is huge for us, and we’re dedicated to seeing it reach its fullest potential.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email advocacy@engine.is.
