When I saw this new jobsite I was quite impressed. One of the things I am involved with is The Direct Marketing Association of Toronto. Our site has a very important section – the industry job postings. My close relationship to this offering has always made me interested in this industry.
As opposed to just passing along this find in a Tweet or a post, I wanted to get some of the background from the owners. Enjoy!
PM: When and where did the idea for FreshGigs.ca come from?
To explain we need to go back a bit. In 2009 my cousin/business partner Michael Zipursky and I started an online community for Canadian consultants and freelancers called Advicetap. Advicetap was a place where top Canadian consultants, freelancers, and small business owners could connect with each other, promote their skills, and search for job opportunities. Through word of mouth, blogging, and social media Advicetap was growing…but we didn’t feel it was fast enough – we needed a way to get the word out to a larger audience, that’s when Business Edge Magazine stepped in…
Business Edge liked the Advicetap idea and wanted to apply it to something new. We formed a partnership and created FreshGigs.ca with the goal of becoming “the” jobsite for Canada’s Freshest Marketing, Creative & Business Jobs.
PM: Are you looking at FreshGigs.ca as a standalone business or as an extension of Business Edge Magazine?
I would say it’s a bit of both. FreshGigs.ca is definitely a standalone business but it’s powered by Business Edge and promoted in the magazine and on the Business Edge website. In a nutshell, FreshGigs.ca is Advicetap and Business Edge joining forces to offer a much needed and valuable service to the Canadian job market.
PM: Are you positioning yourselves as the David to the monster (pun intended) job board Goliaths out there?
In some ways yes. There’s no doubt we are younger and smaller but we definitely want to compete with the “big boys”. We are differentiating ourselves from them in a several ways:
- Focus – FreshGigs.ca is only focusing on Marketing and Creative jobs in Canada. This can mean jobs in branding, social media, communication, etc. The big sites have postings in all industries like engineering, financial, medical, etc – that’s not what’s we’re going after .
- Price – Posting with some of the bigger and more established jobsites can cost anywhere from $300-$750 per posting. That is way too much for your average small to medium sized business. At FreshGigs.ca our job posting prices range from $75 for a freelance posting to $125 for a full-time posting.
PM: Do you think being out west is an advantage or a disadvantage?
Although we’re based out of Vancouver and Business Edge Magazine’s office is in Calgary it doesn’t affect us all that much. First of all Business Edge is distributed nationwide across Canada and FreshGigs.ca is an online website so we all know that geography doesn’t matter that much. It would be nice to have an on the ground presence in the Toronto area and we’re working on having someone out there help us manage that territory.
PM: What is your Social Media strategy going to be for FreshGigs?
We’re definitely doing all the “normal” stuff like running a Facebook fan page, tweeting out blog posts and job postings, and using LinkedIn as well. Something more unique that we’re doing that worked well at Advicetap is letting the registered users contribute to the FreshGigs.ca blog. This means top Canadian Marketing and Creative professionals are blogging with us which really helps them spread their own brand name and in return we’re spreading the FreshGigs.ca name through all the relevant circles.