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20 Questions with Shawn Boyer

"It was just sitting right there under my nose and it made sense. I'm sure lots of people thought something like [SnagAJob.com] would be a good idea. We just ran with it."  

In the world of American small business, Shawn Boyer is king. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Small Business Administration named Boyer its National Small Business Person of the Year. Boyer is president and chief executive officer of SnagAJob.com, which is based right here in Richmond. In less than a decade, Boyer has led the company's amazing growth from being just a good idea to becoming the nation's largest hourly job site.

 

You just won the U.S. Small Business Person of the Year award. So I guess you aren't doing any job searches for yourself these days.

 

Wow, I hope not. I love it here.

 

Did you have any idea that you were going to be picked for the award or was it a complete shock?

 

It was a complete secret. Until we got the letter and the call, I didn't even know that we might be considered to the state award. We found that out about a month ago and we were completely excited and honored and shocked. Because of that we were able to go to D.C. to the national awards where they bring in all of the other state award winners. That Monday night we went to the state department for a big reception, which was super cool. That Tuesday they had stuff all morning and then they were doing the awards ceremony at lunch. They announced who the two second runners up were because there was a tie and then they announced the runner up but we were just happy to be there. In talking to the other people there I realized that there were some really cool companies there and a lot of people who had much larger companies that what we have so I had no expectation of winning. The way they did it was they would start talking about the company then they would call you up on stage. They said they were going to announce the winner and when they said, "In 1999, this person was searching for a job for a friend..." my wife who was sitting behind me started punching me in the back. That's how we found out.

 

After you won the award, you were thrown in to a whirpool of national media attention. You were interviewed by many major business publications, you were on CNN and you were even mentioned in a speech by President Bush. Has the reality of the magnitude of this award set in yet?

 

Probably not. I am super appreciative and totally excited about it but it is also one of those things where I will probably reflect on it over and over again and each time that I do I will get all excited over it over and over again. I like to write in a journal so as soon as I got home from D.C., I tried to write everything down as soon as we got home late that night because I didn't want to forget any of it. Over the weekend, my wife and I were talking about it and she said, "Can you believe that we got to go to the White House and meet the president?" It has just been really neat.

 

I know you have told this story a million times over the past two weeks but how did you come up with the idea for SnagAJob.com?

 

In 1999, I was working in D.C. at a law firm and I had a friend who was and was getting her Ph.D. at American University and looking for an internship in medical anthropology. She couldn't find one so she asked if I could look online for her. I went online and did a search and there was really only one other site at the time that was listing internship positions. My parents have a retail store in Williamsburg and I called my dad and telling him about it and he said, "Well, what about college and high school kids who just want more of a traditional hourly job during the semester or summer?" I went back online to do another search and there was nothing for them.

 

I thought that was odd. I would have loved to have had a site like that when I was in high school and college. I would have loved to have gone down to Hilton Head and worked for the summer but I wouldn't have known how to find a job down there. From a retailers perspective, my dad said he would have loved to be able to use a site like that to recruit people.

 

At the time, I wasn't proficient at all with the Internet. I didn't know anything about recruiting. I knew there were all the big job boards like Monster, CareerBuilder, HotJobs and a ton of other ones and I figured that maybe one of them was getting ready to do it. So I continued to do the research but not spend that much time on it but started to get more and more serious about it over time. I also had an idea for a real estate site and I decided to leave the law firm to run with it but the real estate thing kind of petered out. Then I went all out on SnagAJob. We made a business plan, we contracted out the initial build of the site to a local company and we ended up going live with the site in May 2000. Actually, it was eight years to the day from the time we opened our office to the day President Bush told the SnagAJob story on national TV, which is kind of cool.

 

Looking back, are you surprised that the online hourly job search niche wasn't filled at the time you started running with your idea?

 

Oh yeah. It's one of those things where it's not like it was a patentable technology or idea or anything like that. It was just sitting right there under my nose and it made sense. I'm sure lots of people thought something like [SnagAJob.com] would be a good idea. We just ran with it.

 

Also looking back, did you have any idea that this company would grow as rapidly as it did and become as successful as it has become in such a short span of time?

 

Yes and no. We had big goals for ourselves, probably primarily out of ignorance, that we could grow the company that quickly. But what I didn't realize or have the appreciation for was the impact it ends up having on people. Not just the people we have here in the company, but the impact it has on all of the jobseekers that you are able to have every single day. You can look at it in one of two ways. One way is looking at it at the macro level -- we are getting four million people coming to the site every month. The other way is looking at the anecdotal level -- look at a person's story where they were out of work for five months. They couldn't find a job. They were going to have to sell their house or weren't going to be able to pay their lease at their apartment. But because they were able to find a job on SnagAJob, they can now make that mortgage payment or make that lease payment and that is the really cool thing and something I did not have an appreciation for. The other thing is that from an employer standpoint we have been able to help some really big companies do business much more efficiently.

 

You have a pretty big personal connection with Virginia. You are from Williamsburg, you went to both William & Mary and Washington & Lee. Why did you want to open your business in Richmond? Was it just the family ties or was there something else?

 

There were two big reasons I wanted to leave D.C. and start the business. It was so expensive to live up there and I hated the traffic. When we first started, my parents were really instrumental in helping raise money from friends and family to start the company. They also put their life savings into it. So I bought a place in Williamsburg and then we opened our first office just west of Williamsburg. But in that first year when we were trying to hire people, they were basically all applying from Richmond. Then when they found out that they were interviewing in and would be commuting to Williamsburg, they had some questions. We ended up quickly deciding that we were going to move to Richmond as soon as the one-year lease was up. We moved to the East End, right out by the airport and we stayed there for five years until we moved out to Innsbrook two years ago. But I love Richmond. It's big enough so there is stuff to do whether it is restaurants or entertainment or whatever you want to do but it is not so big that you have to deal with the hustle and bustle like traffic that you have in D.C. Plus, Virginia is a great state to do business in because it is so corporation friendly.

 

Now that you have received this ultimate accolade for a young growing business, what does the future hold in store for SnagAJob.com?

 

We want to continue to grow and take advantage of the opportunities. It is such a huge market. The market as we look at it is both online recruitment and then it is the hourly component of online recruitment. Online recruitment is projected to grow 24 percent annually over the next four years and hourly workers make up 60 percent of America's population. We are really the only one that is focused specifically on that and we view it as a huge, huge market and it is all about continuing to make ourselves known to more and more job seekers and more and more job employers. We also want to continue to build out the suite of services that we offer them so we can really be the one-stop-shop platform for them as they try to hire the best hourly people that they can. For the jobseekers, we want to be a resource for not just when they are looking for a job but when they are on the job and looking for tips on how to do their job better in general.

 

We also want to expand into Canada in the next 12 months and within the next three years we want to expand into western Europe and Asia as well. So we have big goals but we are trying to be disciplined enough so we don't bite off more than we can chew.

 

With all the talk of recession and economic strife, what are some of the biggest issues hourly jobseekers face today?

 

First of all, it depends upon the industry in which you are working. If you are in the automotive industry, you are probably looking to get into another industry all together, which is tough because you may have built your entire career in a specific field. The same goes for construction depending on where you are geographically. The second thing is if you are out looking for a job, how do you really differentiate yourself from all of the other applicants that are out there? We are encouraging people to be really flexible with your work schedule. In an hourly type of position, the easiest way to get yourself thrown into the round file is to put down that you will not work nights or weekends. Seven out of ten hiring managers said that flexible schedule and positive attitude were the two most important things.

 

Do you miss your days as a transactional attorney?

 

No. It was a bigger firm and you end up getting so specialized and I was the low person on the totem pole anyway so I would get thrown all the crap work. So, no.

 

What was the worst job you ever had? Transactional attorney?

 

No. At least that one paid well.   The worst job I ever had was probably doing construction crew cleanup when I was in college. I was playing football at William & Mary and we would have our afternoon workouts but those were after I had been working all day out in the heat and Williamsburg humidity and hauling stuff around and then I had to go run and lift weights. That was probably the worst.

 

What is the best book you have read in the past year?

 

I would say "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

 

What is your favorite guilty pleasure?

 

Probably a good margarita.

 

What is your favorite vacation spot?

 

I love to ski and I love the beach so I would say either Utah for skiing or Hilton Head.

 

Who is your biggest role model?

 

My dad. He always had the can-do attitude that you can really do anything if you put your mind to it and work super hard at it that there is no limit on what it is that you can achieve.

 

What is the hardest life lesson that you have had to learn?

 

Failure can be a good learning experience.

 

What are your hobbies?

 

I love to read. I try to have a good biography or history book going, a good business book going and some kind of good spiritual book going all at the same time. I also love to run. I love to run marathons. I also have a five-month-old baby and hanging out with her is newest found fun hobby.

 

What is your favorite gift to give?

 

A good book or a good bottle of wine, depending on who the recipient is.

 

What is your favorite spot in Richmond?

 

Probably Zeus Gallery Cafe .

 

Richmond is ____________?

 

A phenomenal place to do business and a phenomenal place to raise a family.