Working for free? Unheard of you say?
Not when you’d like to keep your job skills sharp and the economy is down, making jobs scarce.
I first heard about Jobnob and the idea of working for free from a quirky little networking session that aimed to unite recently unemployed professionals with startups looking for people to help them get started… up. With the economic crash that happened late last year, startups have been in dire straights for most of this year: everyone has been spending less, investing less, and because of that startups based on great ideas have been floundering around trying to get their businesses up and running.
Enter the quirky little networking session: the Jobnob Happy Hour.
Although not ideal if you have a mortgage to pay and kids to feed, the premise of the Jobnob Happy Hour is that you volunteer your time for a startup while you’re looking for a job. It’s win-win for both parties because you help them stretch out every dollar they have, while you show them what you’ve got and why you should be the first employee they hire when the money starts rolling in.
On top of that, you can feel the impact of everything you do. Your opinion on everything actually matters. You have a new idea that you’re excited about? Run with it, give it a try! Definitely not something you would expect if you have a corporate background like me, and it is immensely satisfying when something you did catches on and you know that you had a hand in it.
Volunteering my time has also helped me broaden my horizons. Coming from a background in Public Relations, there have been many marketing terms I’ve heard being bandied around quite a bit recently: search engine optimization, organic searches, paid searches, Google Analytics, social media, etc. But to actually sit down and learn what these things are, how to utilize these things, and why you even need them at all has been incredibly enlightening. It’s been useful in understanding how I can be better at my own field and I definitely know it’ll make me better at my own job, when I do get back on my feet.
And the kicker is that I know these aren’t things I would’ve learned at a normal job.
