A Hot Commodity on the Job Market: Nerds

Looking for a nerd? Although this sounds like a strange commodity, on HourlyNerd.com, they’re abundant and ready to hire for the “odd jobs” of the consulting world. With a tough, changing job market, this startup is connecting employers with capable MBAs to work on projects that otherwise couldn’t be funded.
This idea started back in 2013 when four Harvard Business School students decided to turn a class project into a business. They realized that it was difficult for graduates with MBAs to find work, as well as hard for small businesses to afford consulting advice and help. So the students started a business where MBAs can find jobs in a wide range of areas, including analyses of competitors or starting social media sites for non-profits.
Freelancing and a master in business administration aren’t usually associated, but with the changing work environment, which emphasizes individuals with unique, specific skill sets, it’s not such a crazy notion. With just a year under its belt, HourlyNerd already boasts 32 employees who work with a multitude of businesses to find work for around 8,000 MBA freelancers.
HourlyNerds’ service benefits both employer and employee. The website is a place where MBAs can market their own individual skill sets. Furthermore, the hours are very flexible, allowing workers to create their own schedule. At the same time, employers are receiving valuable work at a low long-term cost.
Services offered by HourlyNerd include interviews with employers to match their needs to specific workers, help creating project proposals and figuring out appropriate prices.  For big projects, there is even a competition which ensures top quality work. Based on skill set and proposals, employers choose the best candidate and work with them to agree on a cost.
Peter Maglathlin is one of the founders of HourlyNerd and cites the flexibility and adaptability of the programs and the workers as a major attraction for employers.
“What we have established is an open marketplace,” Maglathlin tells National Journal. “The cost of bringing on a full-time employee right now is very, very high. Companies are searching for other ways to grow aside from hiring a person full time. We’re giving companies that option.”
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How Digital Tools Are Helping In the Fight for Gender Equality

Courtney Martin set her iPhone down where she could see it. She had to keep an eye out for a possible text from her husband, who was with their daughter at the bed and breakfast where the family of three was staying while in Camden, Maine.
Martin, an author, speaker and activist, was in town for PopTech 2014, a social impact conference that drew 600 creatives together around the theme of rebellion. As a new mother, Martin arrived at the Camden Opera House with a different perspective than the one she had on stage a few years earlier for her popular TED talk, which focused on feminism and drew on the way her own mother inspired her path to where she is today.
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During that talk, Martin said that we need a range of people and solutions to advance the work of the mothers and grandmothers who have worked so hard to make life better for their children and grandchildren.
In an interview with NationSwell about the solutions that excite her most, the editor emerita of Feministing.com started by pointing to the way the web has created a cost for sexism.
“We’ve really figured out how to get people galvanized, in a sense shaming sexist actors into changing,” she says. The innovation in digital tools, such as online petitions and apps like Hollaback! (which has partnered with New York City to allow victims of sexual harassment to upload their experiences in real time versus dealing with the process of filing a formal complaint) is providing new and more effective ways to battle anything that falls short of equal treatment.
But now, Martin says that the question is how to keep that engagement going beyond the click of a button. “We need some kind of larger strategic goal and plan and way to work together collectively.”
Organizations taking us in the right direction include UltraViolet, a community that launches campaigns for equality — from petitioning congressional representatives to reauthorize and expand the Violence Against Women Act to organizing a rally that was part of what led Facebook to name the first woman to its board of directors.
Martin also points to Make It Work, a community committed to the idea that Americans should not have to choose between earning a good living and spending quality time with their family. Instead of preaching to the feminist choir, the organization works to make these topics accessible to everyone, like through their Make It Work quiz on what television show characters we channel “when work and life get crazy.”
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Martin explains that, despite the way she and her husband have been able to pursue freelance careers that allow them to spend more time with their daughter (who has been on 38 flights and counting), balancing it all can still be a challenge.
“I still have this deep conflict between doing what I love and being with who I love and how do I make it all work?” she says. “It’s ridiculous we’re so far behind on those issues and yet it’s been so difficult over the last decade to make a change.”
Fortunately, the window of opportunity to make major change in areas like maternity leave policy opens wider as elections approach. And with that timing in mind, there are organizations hard at work.
One such group is SPARK (an acronym that stands for sexualization, protest, action, resistance, knowledge), which empowers girls to be their own activists. Breaking the “protect our girls” mold, the organization elevates the voices of young women to discuss their own experiences. Martin, whose first book was Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: How the Quest for Perfection is Harming Young Women, points to SPARK as a solution that inspires her, emphasizing the value of teenage girls expressing how they relate to their own body versus women trying to advocate on their behalf.
Martin, who embodies the rebellion theme printed on stickers and tote bags in the room where she sat, says that she is also thrilled by a cultural shift in what defines a feminist. “For a long time the narrative has been let’s get men involved so they can help women,” she says. “But now we see they have a self interest in the liberation of men and women because were all constricted by these roles.”
Starting with her own husband, Martin points to men who have inspired her by adopting this issue as their own: Jay Smooth, who has put his voice to use not only through his hip hop radio show but also against misogyny; Michael Kimmel, a leader in masculinity studies who is also the founder and spokesperson for the National Organization for Men Against Sexism; and Jimmie Briggs, who started an organization called Man Up, which aims to involve young male advocates to advance gender equality.
Eleven months into motherhood, Martin says her daughter has only made her more passionate — radicalized even — around the issue of work-life balance. “I look at Maya and I just think I want the most equal, fascinating, safe world for her possible and I will do anything to make that happen,” she says.
As she pursues that world, Martin will support the solutions that are out there, while also putting into practice points she made at PopTech that took off in the Twittersphere, including showing up as her whole self and trusting her own outrage.

Bringing It Home: The International Org Now Helping U.S. College Students

Starting over isn’t easy for anyone, but that’s where Mary Skaggs found herself at age 69, after battling Stage 4 lung cancer. It was December 2006 when she got the diagnosis, and the doctors were doubtful she would survive. Against their wishes, she pushed to continue chemotherapy — a testament to her persistence — and after eight long months, she was in remission. But that wasn’t the end of Skaggs’ struggle. After 20 years as a truck driver, lingering ailments (including asthma, emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) forced her to give up the job she loved and, with it, the paycheck that her family desperately needed to cover medical expenses.

When it was time for Skaggs to find a new career, she knew she needed something with a flexible schedule, one that would allow her to work from home and provide for her and her husband, who is also ill. She started taking classes at Merced College’s Business Resource Center in Merced, Calif., to learn basic computer skills. There, in the fall of 2013, she met a representative looking for volunteers for a new, free program offering job-skill training, intensive computer instruction and a chance for a better life. She was immediately interested. “I thought, ‘This sounds great,’” she says. “By the time I graduated, it had opened my life enormously. My whole life had changed.”
That program, SamaUSA, is a branch of San Francisco-based Samasource, an innovative social impact organization that connects people living in poverty around the world to work on the Internet. Headquartered at Samasource at 16th and Mission, SamaUSA focuses on helping folks earn money at home through online work so they can supplement their income and eventually graduate from college, leading to higher lifetime earning potential.
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“Education is often cited as the solution to alleviating poverty or breaking the cycle, as people with college degrees earn up to $1 million more in their lifetimes than those with just a high school diploma,” says Leila Janah, founder and CEO of Samasource and SamaUSA. “Yet 80 percent of students drop out of community college.” Most of these students are forced to quit for one reason: money. According to a Public Agenda report for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 71 percent of college dropouts said they had to quit school in order to go to work. Of those who attended school, but never graduated, 63 percent of students said balancing school and work was just too stressful. And nearly two-thirds of dropouts said they would like to finish their degrees. “At SamaUSA, we are aiming to change these statistics by providing low-income students access to a new economy and an opportunity to move above the poverty line,” Janah says.
SamaUSA is also job training at its most cost efficient: It currently spends about $3,000 per trainee, as much as $20,000 less expensive than other comparable job training programs. Initial funding was provided by the California Endowment — a private statewide foundation that expands access to health care and other needed services — but SamaUSA is currently seeking new financing to expand its impact.
At Merced College, Skaggs listened to the SamaUSA pitch: During a 10-week bootcamp, students learn the skills they need to be successful freelancers in the online market. With the help of instructors, they then build profiles on websites like Elance, oDesk and TaskRabbit, where they can apply for jobs in areas such as customer service, marketing, data entry, research and graphic design. The program was exactly what Skaggs was looking for. She wanted in. “I had come to Merced College strictly to get some type of computer skills so I could get a job online,” Skaggs says, adding that her health problems would eventually make her housebound. “But I was not sure how I was going to get my skills from the learning stage to the usage stage.” For Skaggs and other students, SamaUSA can bridge that gap, either by teaching them how to earn supplemental income while in school, or providing them with everything they need to develop a new career.
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SamaUSA is based on a business model called microwork, a concept that Janah developed in 2008 with the founding of Samasource, which so far has helped more than 20,000 women and youth in areas such as East Africa, South Asia and Haiti lift themselves and their families out of poverty through digital outsourcing. The microwork model takes complex data projects from large tech companies in the United States like Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn and breaks them down into small tasks, which are then completed by workers overseas. Samasource has been so successful that the organization was awarded a $2 million Google Global Impact Award last year.
But fighting poverty in the U.S. presents unique challenges. The SamaUSA pilot program launched its first classes in March 2013 in the Bayview-Hunters Point YMCA, near Samasource’s offices in San Francisco. The area is just 40 miles from Silicon Valley, but it has a poverty rate of close to 40 percent. “Even though Bayview is within one of the largest tech hubs in the world, there are not a lot of technology jobs that are accessed by this community,” says Tess Posner, SamaUSA’s director. “There’s a huge digital divide.”
To get the program off the ground, the SamaUSA team also had to combat the misperception that online work is a scam. After all, who would come to this low-income neighborhood and offer free laptops and technology classes, along with a promise of limitless job opportunities? “We were a new program, and no one knew who we were or what online work is,” Posner says. “It took time to build credibility.”
The first course in Bayview was a success, with the average 2013 graduate earning $1,800 working online and 92 percent of students staying in school. At Merced College, SamaUSA’s second location that opened in the fall of 2013, full-time job opportunities in the area are few and far between: The unemployment rate is a staggering 15.9 percent. That’s why a program like SamaUSA is a welcome opportunity for Skaggs and other adults who are attending Merced College to change careers. The flexible schedule has fit perfectly into Skaggs’ life. She can continue to take classes at Merced’s Business Resource Center, keep an eye on her husband and earn a decent amount of supplemental income doing data entry and research. “[SamaUSA] has given me everything I didn’t know I needed,” she says.
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In January, SamaUSA launched a third location: Feather River College in Quincy, Calif., a rural area in the Sierra Mountains with a high unemployment rate and little industry growth. Alesha Lindsey, 20, is a student in the first SamaUSA course here and has been consistently working a variety of jobs — from the Quincy Pizza Factory to Subway — while putting herself through school. With about 30 credits to go, Lindsey has finally nailed down her major, in part because of her attendance in the SamaUSA program. She’s now seeking a business degree, with an emphasis on marketing.
At first, Lindsey, like many other SamaUSA students, struggled to understand the concept of online work, but she now sees the program as an opportunity to build a better life for herself — as well as help her neighbors. “A lot of rural communities focus on keeping the money in their own town, which means there’s only so much to go around,” Lindsey says. “If I’m able to do online work, then I can bring in new money. And I can go the coffee shops and cafes and keep those places in business.”
Though SamaUSA is still in the early stages of development, Tess Posner is excited about the organization’s future. “Some students started [building careers] online, earning thousands of dollars in different fields, and applying that money right back into their college education,” she says. Instructors continue to support program graduates by hosting weekly SamaCafe gatherings, where they get together to apply for jobs, ask questions and connect with their classmates. And as SamaUSA continues to grow — Leila Janah, its founder, hopes that the program can expand to other areas of California in 2014 before going nationwide in 2015 — so will the opportunities to share what they’ve learned. “When you’re empowered with technology, it stays with you for the rest of your life,” Posner says. “It changes everything.”
Additional reporting by Charlotte Parker.
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