Hundreds of employers need people to cover short-term projects, while many mothers with matching skills would like flexible, part-time work. A new online community aims to bring these two groups together.
Have you ever thought that, while you might not be able to justify a full-time employee, it would be great to take someone on for just a couple of days a week, only to discover that you can’t find what you are looking for?
If so, 2to3days.com might be just be the thing for you. Due to go live in May 2015, it is a private community that aims to hook mothers up with potential employers via a simple dashboard that enables them to do a variety of things, such as request an interview or access useful content.
People were always saying that they needed great people, but couldn’t justify taking on someone full time.” – Juliet Turnbull, 2to3days.com
Also included in the mix are experts in areas ranging from career and executive coaching to wardrobe advice and social media training, who receive ratings from users based on their own experiences.
Just under 2,500 members have already signed up to the site, 2,100 of which are women looking for work, whether it be part-time, or a short- or long-term contracts.
Making the connection
Juliet Turnbull, founder and chief executive, explains the rationale: “I’d been a business coach for 10 years and people were always saying that they needed great people, but couldn’t justify taking on someone full time.
“But, as a mother, I was also hanging out with other women who were passionate about wanting to work but be mothers too. So I thought ‘who is connecting these two pools?’”
The problem, she says, is that most recruitment agencies and/or job boards only cater for full-time staff, while many mothers do not necessarily use LinkedIn or social media to find employment, and might not think of going to careers fairs.
This means that, even if they thought about it proactively, many employers would simply have no idea of how to find and tap into this “hidden workforce” of professionals.
To make sure that everyone is suitably committed to the community, there is a staggered membership fee.
Mothers pay £20 per month or £200 annually, experts are asked to fork out £25 per month or £210 per year to promote their offerings, while employers are charged £225 per month to place a job advert – although the advert can be modified over that time should circumstances change.
The idea behind the site’s name is that everyone, whether a mother or an employer, apparently always says that they are looking for something or someone for two or three days – and so the name stuck.
Hidden workforce
But Turnbull has big ambitions for her new baby, one of the key aims being to build an international business “so we could have mothers based in South Africa working for companies in England, for example”, she says.
“We want to be the number one place that mothers think of and that employers can go to in order to find this hidden workforce,” Turnbull adds.
“But we also want to be the place that politicians and thought leaders go to when they want information on this group of people – so, in other words, to be the equivalent of Mumsnet for working mothers.”
