App offers students jobs, and helps homeowners
Ryerson undergrads developed service to address need for flexible work options for peers
Alex Ryzer and Marko Semcesen were frustrated with the hurdles involved in the student job market: inflexible hours, micromanaging and shoddy pay.
The Ryerson University undergraduate students kept coming back to one view: the current service-industry model isn’t accommodating students’ needs. So they set out to change the game. Their Toronto-based startup, LocalStudent, offers jobs to young adults in a pandemic-shattered economy.
In the summer of 2019, they started their company to connect homeowners in need of a range of services with nearby students.
They started with 50 clients, with students performing tasks such as lawn mowing, dog walking, cleaning, tutoring and snow shovelling.
“It’s like Uber for student services,” Ryzer says. “Our on-demand platform allows students to choose their own schedule, which allows them to work around their online classes.
“Most importantly, this style of work allows students to work independently and outdoors, meaning they can safely maintain social distance from other people.”
Their platform has catered to 700 customers across several cities, with a growing team of 400 students in the last year.
Driven by personal experience — and further motivated by the pandemic, which has caused an increase in unemployment and depression — Ryzer and Semcesen are focusing on offering flexibility and options to young adults like themselves.
Take the snow-shovelling business, in which LocalStudent has become a player.
As unpredictable as Canadian weather can be — Toronto didn’t see its first major snowfall this winter until last week — a seasonal contract can be useless when there’s no snow. By allowing students to work by day, instead of month, both parties benefit, Ryzer and Semcesen say.
The business has been deemed an essential service by Ontario and the provincewide lockdown created an excellent opportunity for offering no-contact jobs for students. Any student from the age of 16 is eligible to work for LocalStudent.
“We have received 7,000 applications in just the past 30 days,” Semcesen says.
As homeowners book the service online, they’re inadvertently contributing to a growing digital economy for young professionals.
“But it’s more than just a way to make quick cash,” Semcesen says. “We also want students to be recognized for their work ethic.”
Discussing the number of requests they receive for references, he laughed about how they worried about keeping up. The management team decided to create a certificate recognizing the students who did exemplary work and received high customer ratings, something that could be used for college or job applications.
“You can’t apply for a job without work experience,” Semcesen says. “And I think we offer that.”
Kamran Fotovat, who started with LocalStudent as a lawn mower last summer and was promoted to a management position, explained how it works.
When a customer makes a request, the company’s calendar is updated and students are notified of a new job available. The jobs are first come, first served and the student arranges a time with the client. Quality control is maintained through reviews along with before and after pictures. Students are paid directly through the website.
“The flexibility was great and I soon recommended this job to my friend,
who’s still working with us today,” Fotovat says. “We’re not paid by the hour, but I would estimate a fee of $25 to $27 minus expenses for a standard lawnmowing job.”
Snow-shovelling jobs go for a similar fee for students and cost clients around $40 per session, Fotovat says.
Originally targeting the Greater Toronto Area, the business has expanded to 23 Canadian cities, including Ottawa and Calgary. There are also plans for LocalStudent to launch in the U.S this summer.
Ryzer and Semcesen are already thinking
bigger. Looking into the future, they believe that many jobs will be taken over by automation and artificial intelligence, many of them currently held by students.
They want to create a platform that would allow students to start businesses under the LocalStudent umbrella and to continue to offer manual services that are difficult to automate.
“We want to become the new way for students to find work and our goal is to have a student signed up in every neighbourhood, on every street,” Semcesen says.