Stephanie Florio is co-founder of Swob. It operates in the Toronto area but has plans to expand the concept to other areas.
What is Swob and how did it come about?
Stephanie Florio
Florio: Swob is designed to make job searching for students easy and recruitment even easier. Using their smartphone, students looking for a job can now search in the comfort of their own phone. Swob is the first of its kind to target students in high-turnover industries such as retail and food service for part-time, seasonal and full-time employment. Think Tinder, but for jobs.
For employers, you will now be able to securely filter through quality job candidates instead of quantity. Unlike other job boards that charge per click, our recruiting packages are based on a monthly fee. Our filters will help you find the best candidates quickly and easily. Therefore, reducing the hiring time in half, saving you more time and energy.
What inspired Swob was my brother Alexander’s own frustration when applying to jobs. He thought to himself that there needs to be an easier and more efficient way to apply to jobs, and that’s when the idea came to fruition. Once Alexander and I knew that we wanted to focus on building Swob, the journey began in April 2017.
What has business been like for you since you started?
Florio: Since launching Swob on Nov. 1, 2017, business has certainly taken off. We have over 11,000 users and over 75 companies posting jobs on Swob.
We want to continue to grow and be a resource for both job seekers and employers. After speaking with thousands of students, we realized that there is nothing available to them and most students are applying to jobs using traditional methods.
What makes Swob unique is the fact that we are targeting students and high-turnover industries like retail, food service, etc. and part-time, hourly rate roles.
What were the biggest challenges you faced in starting up a new business?
Florio: The biggest challenges we have faced with Swob is ensuring that we have a strong mix of employers and users. If there aren’t enough employers posting jobs, there won’t be any users, and if there are a lot of employers but no users, these employers won’t return.
We work tirelessly to ensure that employers are aware of Swob and have a strong pool of job seekers who will apply to their roles.
What do you think has been the key factors in your success?
Florio: Alexander and I believe there are many factors that have been key in Swob’s success. Before we launched, we met with multiple employers to gain their feedback and to learn about the struggles they face when recruiting in high turnover industries.
Trust for the employers is a big factor. We realize how important trust is in our business and realize that if an employer is paying us to use our service, it needs to work.
We are always communicating with our clients to ensure that the service is working and to offer up any support we can.
On the job seeker side, we know how frustrating it can be for these students who struggle to find meaningful employment.
With Swob, we wanted to create a tool that is not only relevant to the audience, but simple to use as well.
What are you plans for the future for Swob?
Florio: The future for Swob is bright. We plan to develop Swob for Android and we are also working on being available throughout all of Canada and the United States.
– Mario Toneguzz
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