Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
WAHspace savvy: Virtual job site
Company is network for those who work at home
BOCA RATON — WAHspace, which describes itself as the “LinkedIn” for those who work at home, has grown to 10,000 members in the U.S. and Canada.
While workers may be familiar with LinkedIn, which is a professional networking site, there is no such site designed for people who want to work at home and employers who want to hire them.
That gap gave birth to WAHspace, which stands for the Work-at-Home space. The company, launched 18 months ago, is part of Florida Atlantic University’s Tech Runway accelerator program in Boca Raton, a public-private partnership to foster technology startups.
“People are looking for work-at-home jobs all over the country. The way that we work is changing and the way that we live is changing. As investments in infrastructure have been made, it has opened up a whole new world of possibility,” said WAHspace CEO Sarah Lucas.
Employers on the site posting customerservice jobs include retailer William-Sonoma and Miramar-based Arise Virtual Solutions.
“Schedule your work around your your life, not the other way around,” Arise says in its posting on WAHspace. Arise clients include Carnival Cruise Line in Miami, Staples and Intuit.
Doug Vinson, chief marketing officer for Arise, said he considers WAHspace part of its advertising mix to attract “an opt-in audience of individuals who have already identified themselves as having experience working from home, or at a minimum a strong interest and the motivation to do it.”
Brian Parnell, CEO and founder of Grindtone, a Maryland-based sales support company, has added WAHspace to its recruiting tools because the company is growing quickly and hires only remote workers in the U.S. Pay ranges from $10 to $18 an hour, depending on the client.
“In our space, there’s so much noise and digital marketing, human interaction is often lost. A lot of companies are coming back to tried- and-true telemarketing. You can build a relationship,” Parnell said.
Lucas said employers can save time and money by hiring prescreened and experienced workers on WAHspace. At the same time, workers can feel assured the job is not a scam because employers are vetted, she said. WAHspace reviews corporate registrations, analyzes online reputation reviews, and validates the existence of workat-home opportunities.
While the site is free for job seekers, they
can purchase a background check for $19.99 and certifications for typing and computer systems, available on the site for $14.99 apiece. Those certifications elevate their profile, drawing employers’ attention, Lucas said.
Workers also can opt for a premium membership for $19.95 a month, which includes IT support for their computer systems.
Employers pay $199 annually to list jobs on the website, Lucas said.
Aida Rivera, 40, who lives in Central Florida, recently became certified on WAHspace, after not having much luck on general job sites.
“I’m looking for a parttime job,” she said. It would allow her to be at home with her 9-year-old daughter after school. Rivera speaks both Spanish and English, has a degree in business communications and experience in customer service.
WAHspace’s founder and investor is Jim Ryan, an entrepreneur and mentor to FAU’s Tech Runway program.
Ryan previously founded Talk2Rep, a Fort Lauderdale-based customer relationship company with 700 employees, and TechNearshore, a digital services provider in Boca Raton. Ryan said he’s invested about $300,000 in WAHspace.
“Talk2Rep was having problems with hiring workat-home people. There are so many employers experiencing these same types of problems — that was the incarnation of WAHspace,” Ryan said.
He has been a mentor to more than 20 companies at Tech Runway, including those who have had early success: Candidate.Guru, which developed a platform to analyze job candidates, has attracted $1.5 million in funding. Bedabox, a shipping company recently rebranded as Shipmonk, has racked up $10 million in annual sales, according to founder Jan Bednar.
Ryan met Lucas when she was assistant director at Tech Runway a few years ago. Lucas previously worked for the Domestic Policy Council in Washington, D.C., and earned an MBA from Harvard.
“She’s the business leader and I’m here in an advisory role. We share ideas, collaborate, but this is really Sarah’s business,” Ryan said. But with his entrepreneurial experience, Ryan said he can guide Lucas on a “a better way, a faster way to accelerate this business.”
While Ryan has been solely funding the company so far, he eventually plans to seek venture capital for WAHspace. He’d like to raise about $1 million in an initial round.
“The idea is to ultimately sell the business. We think this is a real complementary business to a company like LinkedIn,” Ryan said.