#StartupsEverywhere profile: Amadu Bah, VP of IT, MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
A Platform for Job Seekers to Market Themselves
Located in the greater Chicago area, MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs is an online platform working to empower job seekers to market themselves to employers. The startup’s goal is to create a wide-reaching social media job candidates’ platform that includes profiles from millions of active and engaged job seekers. We recently spoke with Amadu Bah, the startup’s vice president of IT, to learn more about the platform’s work, concerns about liability protections related to user-generated content, and MoreWithUs’ goals moving forward.
Tell us a little about yourself. What is your background?
I am the VP of IT Project Portfolio Management for MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs, and I have a solid progressive career managing IT Portfolio of projects and programs within Shared Services and bringing new products to market. Since 2002, I have had a long successful career in risk management and information technology working in different IT leadership roles for Wells Fargo Bank, MoneyGram International, and Merrill Corporation. Before joining MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs, I became a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, and was also ITIL Certified and certified Scrum. I received a master’s degree in Business Administration from St. Thomas University.
Throughout my career, I have cultivated expertise in building and bringing new IT products to market that solve consumer problems. I’ve built up a reputation for managing complex multimillion-dollar programs and projects and delivering large scale IT infrastructure initiatives while guiding, supervising, and leading implementation teams across multiple platforms. I’m also very passionate about MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs, and believe that it is a creative tech solution to one of our most important social issues: namely, a job. I love solving problems that affect people and making a positive social impact.
Tell us more about MoreWithUs. What is the work that you’re doing, and how are you working to connect job seekers with employers?
MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs is a jobs and human relations technology company. We specialize in meeting the everyday human resources needs of small businesses and people looking for hourly wage, part-time, and entry level jobs, such as high schoolers and college students.Traditionally, job seekers are looking to apply for a job. MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs gives job seekers the power to market themselves, and also gives employers easy access to qualified candidates.
MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs is transforming the way we do job search and hiring from one that centers on posting a job, to one that is based on presenting the qualifications of job seekers. This desire for a transformational legacy is rooted in the curiosity and passion for creative ideas of the founders of MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs. Our everyday interactions with high school and college students and small businesses led us to ask two basic questions: What if job seekers can easily present and market themselves? And what if employers can easily reach out to qualified job seekers?
In 2017, we founded MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs to transform the jobseeker-employer mode of connecting. We have opened a whole new way of making the job search and hiring process more time and cost efficient for a wide range of entry level jobs in small businesses with limited HR resources. Interestingly, the MoreWithUs model goes deeper than just jobs. It is a whole new way of approaching social media and connecting people (e.g., job seekers and employers) in a way that is simple, focused on a specific need, and transparent—something that is badly lacking in most forms of social media and online commerce.
What we do is simple—we connect job seekers with employers, and then let them communicate directly in a time efficient and cost effective way. We do this by providing a simple platform that functions as a social media candidates’ job board. For job seekers, all they need to do is post a profile for free that lets employers know their job interests, work preferences, and skills—all in a secure and non-intrusive manner. For employers, we make it very easy to search for candidates based on their needs and directly contact the candidates that match their needs. All of this is done in a quick, effective, and very affordable manner. For job seekers, we solve the cumbersome problem of constantly submitting too many job applications. For employers, we solve the problem of waiting for too long to find candidates and/or paying high fees to find candidates. Our platform is a social media searchable directly that easily and effectively connects job seekers with employers near them. It is free for job seekers and very affordable for employers.
We are distinct from all other jobs companies because we focus on presenting candidates to employers. While our competitors ask job seekers to submit applications, we empower job seekers to present themselves and make it easy for employers to find them. Even more, our competitors focus on managing the relations between job seekers and employers, while we let job seekers and employers interact directly.
Are there any particular platform issues that you deal with when it comes to sharing and moderating content from job seekers?
The cool thing about MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs is that we are very transparent. We do not transmit job seeker information. Our platform allows job seekers to post information that they want employers to see. Job seekers can change and update their information whenever they want. Even more important, we do not collect detailed personal information. Job seekers post only generic information about their job interests, skills, and education. If an employer wants more details, the jobseeker can directly send the information to the specific employers.
We take security seriously. We understand that security threats originate from technology breaches and behavioral oversights. Avoiding detailed personal information and focusing on generic information is one of ways we minimize behavioral security threats. As we say, “the world sees what you see; and you can change it at any time”.
What makes DeKalb’s startup ecosystem so unique?
The DeKalb ecosystem is wonderful. It is part of the western suburbs of the greater Chicago area, and there are public universities, lots of community colleges, and a huge body of young people in and out of high school. It also has a lot of small businesses. Overall, it is a great place with the right concentration of people, businesses, communities, and cultures.
What are some of the startup-related policy concerns that you believe should receive more attention from state and federal lawmakers?
The biggest policy issue is the expansion of liability for user-generated information and the criminalization of tech entrepreneurs. We understand that the online space comes with risks, which we should all do our best to prevent. However, technology is an open-ended world of possibilities and innovations that solves everyday human problems. There has to be a proper balance between liability and creativity, especially for issues that are beyond the immediate control of our technological know-how.
Startups are a key engine of the economy and a powerful vehicle for social impact. We need a policy and legal environment that does not stifle innovation. Startups need to be given the chance to make policymakers and lawmakers aware of the challenges they face, as well as their positive impacts in the economy and society.
In our case, we empower job seekers to present themselves and make it easy for employers to reach them. We mostly focus on people with a high school level education. This is a demographic that needs more opportunities for employment. They are critical to the economy and the social cohesion of communities, especially in low income areas.
Overall, the policy framework for online privacy should focus more on educating the public about productive and safe ways to use online resources. MoreWithUs – Everyday Jobs conducts workshops at public libraries to not only share our resources, but also to share best practices to ensure that people gain the benefits of online resources while minimizing their risks. A policy approach that focuses more on education than criminalization would be better for innovation and the safety of the online public.
What is your goal for MoreWithUs over the next year? The next 5 years?
MoreWithUs – Every Jobs wants to fundamentally alter the way we approach job searches and hiring for hourly wage, part-time, and entry level jobs, especially with small businesses. We want to shift the focus to job seekers and empower them to present their job interests and work preferences, while making it very easy for employers to find and contact the candidates that fit their needs.
Our ultimate goal is to develop a robust social media job candidates platform with millions of active jobseeker profiles. We want to have 10,000 jobseeker profiles by next year—especially in the DeKalb and greater Chicago area. Our goal is to reach 1,000,000 jobseeker profiles within the next five years. Ultimately, we want to have a positive social impact in communities across the country by helping people easily get hired, and making it easy for small businesses to meet their human resources needs locally. We want to be a known and credible job resource for high schools, colleges, and social service organizations. We also want to be a partner to communities and small business. We believe everyone will gain more with us.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
Engine works to ensure that policymakers look for insight from the startup ecosystem when they are considering programs and legislation that affect entrepreneurs. Together, our voice is louder and more effective. Many of our lawmakers do not have first-hand experience with the country's thriving startup ecosystem, so it’s our job to amplify that perspective. To nominate a person, company, or organization to be featured in our #StartupsEverywhere series, email edward@engine.is.
