Who is SquareOneJobs?
We envision a world in which everyone has opportunity and purpose, regardless of their circumstances. We exist to break down barriers to employment and help people find their potential and unlock their purpose.
Who are we?
My name is Greg LaVersa and for the last two years, I have been working with my classmate and close friend, Nate Renner, on our startup, SquareOneJobs. We are both engineering students at Stevens Institute of Technology, a path that we chose because we love solving problems and helping people. When we first began studying engineering, we assumed that the only difference that we would be able to make would be at someone else’s company, designing and building their products and services.
That changed when we got an invitation to a program at our school called Launchpad, an incubator with the purpose of helping the daring build enduring companies. Launchpad is focused on solving real-world problems and helping people that truly need it. It provided us with an opportunity to solve problems on a scale that we never even imagined and help people in our own unique way.
When we first joined, inspired by the missions and dreams of our fellow students, Nate and I began looking into poverty and the cycle of unemployment and hardship that is faced by millions of Americans. As we both come from small, suburban areas, living just outside of New York City for the first time opened our eyes to a world of challenges that we had heard about but never witnessed. In order to understand the issue better, we began volunteering at the Hoboken Homeless Shelter, which is where we found out that many of the hardships that people face are rooted in the criminal justice system.
The Problem
Digging deeper into the prison-industrial complex, we were shocked to find out just how many individuals were affected by it. Currently, there are over 70 million people in the United States with a criminal record and we have the most incarcerated people per capita of any country in the world, at almost 5 times the global average. The unemployment rate of formerly incarcerated people is over 27%, higher than the national rate at any point in U.S. history, including the Great Depression. Not only that, but extensive research and hundreds of credible employer testimonies have concluded that individuals with criminal records make more productive, loyal, and hard-working employees.
We found that the nation had a massive population of valuable employees that was being overlooked by employers because of harmful stereotypes. In an attempt to spread awareness of the issue, we have spent much of the last two years researching this problem and ways to address it, compiling our findings on the ways that criminal justice reform could benefit individuals, businesses, and the nation.
Our Solution
To solve a problem that affects tens of millions of people and costs businesses across the nation billions of dollars every year, we needed to create something new. We realized that people needed a way to get back to square one, and get a fresh start in their career using everything they have learned in the past.
To help them accomplish this goal, we designed and built a smart, effective job service portal with the goal of providing opportunity for everyone, regardless of the obstacles that they have overcome. In order to serve our users to the best of our ability, we have been focusing on four unique ways to give both our users and our employers the best possible experience.
- Providing resources, tools, and training to allow our users to become better employees
- Using the gig economy to allow users at early stages in their careers to gain experience, build credibility, and demonstrate their value to full-time employers
- Building a smart hiring pipeline for employers to ensure that they are never understaffed
- Using artificial intelligence to match employers with the perfect candidates
Growth of SquareOneJobs
When we first began, we planned to only allow people with criminal records to sign up as users on our site. However, after speaking with some incredible people at local non-profits, and our advisors who have decades of industry experience, we decided that there are many other groups that will need to get back to square one, and our sign up is open now to everyone. We will still be catering our service to meet the specific needs of groups that we feel will promote our mission and make valuable employees, such as formerly incarcerated individuals, veterans, and people with disabilities.
We are incredibly excited to announce that, as of today, we have finished our initial development and our new website is hosted live at https://www.squareonejobs.com/. With this update, we are here to help anyone build a career from square one. We will continue to develop new features and we have some very exciting updates that will be announced in the coming months. As always, we would love to hear your feedback and you can reach out to us in the comments below or at hello@squareonejobs.com.
Finally, we want to give a special thank you to Mukund Iyengar, and everyone else that has supported us so far. We cannot wait to continue growing our mission and moving one step closer to a nation where everyone has opportunity — regardless of their circumstances.
