Student entrepreneurs create website that finds classmates work

StudentHire lists one-off jobs in the Edmonton area for those in college

Three Alberta business students are helping fellow scholars pay for their education one house cleaning appointment, photography assignment or graphic design contract at a time.

The trio launched the StudentHire website in Edmonton last spring to link people offering one-off jobs with post-secondary students looking for extra income or experience in their field.

“I always wanted to own my own business, but also do something that could make a difference,” says company co-founder Richard Clark, in his second year of business at MacEwan University.

“We believed we created a viable solution to help students fund their education while they’re in school.”

The idea grew out of a classroom project last year in which people were asked to use $5 to create a sustainable venture.

Clark, 25, once applied for a position through Kijiji promising to pay $17 to $25 an hour, only to find out not only was the pay not guaranteed, but he’d have to spend $1,000 buying knives to sell. He wanted to provide students with trustworthy job leads.

He and classmate Adam Prince, 24, set up a simple version of StudentHire through Facebook and a couple Google docs that attracted 300 students in three weeks.

That success caused them to move ahead with a proper website they launched nine months ago with their 23-year-old friend Marc Nzojibwami, a second-year business student at Calgary’s Mount Royal University.

The site now offers about 500 positions in the Edmonton area, including wedding videographer ($41), dog poop collector ($33), WordPress site designer ($164), house cleaner ($131) and couch mover ($16).

The company charges jobseekers, who on average earn $166 per assignment, with a 15-per-cent fee taken off before the salary is posted.

They’ve signed up about 1,100 students and 1,500 employers, each able to rate the other online once the work is done, and processed jobs that have paid total salaries of nearly $30,000.

Anders Cerezke-Riemer, 19, heard about StudentHire from his grandparents and tried it because he needed short-term work.

The first-year NAIT forestry student has earned between $2,500 and $3,000 doing such chores as cleaning a car, landscaping and giving guitar lessons.

We believed we created a viable solution to help students fund their education while they’re in school.

“I did two or three days at a temp agency before I got any jobs through the website,” he says.

“The website paid more, generally, and also the connections you make through those people, the next time you work for them you don’t have to go through the website, and they can refer you to other friends … I was able to pay for school, because I didn’t have a proper summer job.”

An updated platform is set to launch in January. Clark says they plan to expand to Calgary in February and, if things go well, Lethbridge later in the year.

The partners hope to make their business a full-time operation by the time they graduate in 2019.

“Right now we’re just trying to stay small. We’re trying to work out some of the kinks,” Clark says.

“It’s building slowly but surely.”