By Mario Toneguzzi

Employers and franchise owners in Ontario, Alberta and B.C., who struggle hiring and finding new talent, can now connect with students through an innovative, award-winning app called Swob™. Students and job seekers can now apply to a variety of job positions and connect with employers through this first-of-its kind app. Swob™ was designed to make job searching for students easy and recruitment even easier. Through the use of technology, students and job seekers looking for a job can now search in the comfort of their own phone.

Swob™, which has been described as the “Tinder for jobs”, was developed by Alexander and Stephanie Florio, a brother-sister team, for employers in high turnover industries such as retail and food services.

Stephanie says it was created to simplify the recruiting process for employers, as it gives them a vast database of young people looking for job opportunities. Swob™ is the first of its kind to target students in high turnover industries such as retail, and food services for part time, seasonal and full time employment. With Swob™, employers are able to experience the benefits of securely filtering through the best possible candidates, safely and efficiently.

“We have been growing considerably and since launching in November, we’ve had thousands of downloads” says Stephanie Florio.

“We want employers to know that this is a new recruiting tool. We’ve made recruiting as simple and easy as possible for the employer”.

“Swob™ is best suited for industries that have high turnovers, such as retail and food services and not meant for corporate roles. We’re going after your part-time, hourly rate roles. Students and job seekers can download the free app and apply to jobs right from their phone. It’s great for employers because they don’t have to spend time going through stacks of resumes, rather they can login to their employer profile where everything is centralized in our employer dashboard.”

Richard branson sits with Swob's Stephanie and Alexander in Calgary.

In May 2018, Swob™ was the first Canadian company to have won Sir Richard Brandon’s ‘Pitch to Rich’ contest. It was a huge honour and the Florio’s were recently given the opportunity to meet with Sir Richard Branson, founder of the iconic Virgin group of companies, in Calgary.

Both Stephanie and Alexander Florio studied at York University and then both went to Seneca and studied marketing. When they graduated, both worked in advertising and public relations for four years in total. But in the spring of last year, they left their roles to focus all their energies towards developing Swob™.

The app, which went live last November, is free for students and Swob™ generates its revenue from companies who post jobs on the app. To date, some companies who have posted include McDonald's, Tim Hortons, Pizzaville, The Keg, Kelsey’s, Paramount Fine Foods, and M&M Food Markets.

An employer can sign up by visiting the website and scrolling down to “Sign up as an employer”. Employers receive two free job posts once they sign up and can then select one of the job packages that are offered, depending on the employer’s hiring needs.

Once an account has been approved by the Swob™ team, an employer will be able to post and remove positions in the Employer Dashboard at the top right corner of the Swob™ website. There is also a filtering system to make it easier for employers to find the right candidate. They can filter the candidates by age, experience and availability.

If you are an employer looking to hire, visit http://www.swobapp.com/ to sign up and get 2 FREE job posts. Click here to get started: www.swobapp.com.

*Partner Content. To work with Retail Insider, contact Craig Patterson at: craig@retail-insider.com.

Mario Toneguzzi, based in Calgary has 37 years of experience as a daily newspaper writer, columnist and editor. He worked for 35 years at the Calgary Herald covering sports, crime, politics, health, city and breaking news, and business. For 12 years as a business writer, his main beats were commercial and residential real estate, retail, small business and general economic news. He nows works on his own as a freelance writer and consultant in communications and media relations/training. Email: mdtoneguzzi@gmail.com.

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