Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

Urban Interns, which launched in beta in February, hopes to link small businesses with students and graduates looking for part-time work.

The site was founded by Lauren Porat, a veteran of IAC, and Cari Sommer, an attorney who formerly worked with Bryan Cave. The two began by recruiting applicants through campus career centers and reaching out to small business groups. BusinessWeek already named Urban Interns as one of America’s Most Promising Startups.

“Urban Interns is a unique business, launched in the midst of the recession, that provides a much needed resource to small businesses to hire for their growing needs, while helping put New Yorkers back to work,” Sommer said. “Business owners are increasingly relying on a variety of part-time, flexible paid and unpaid hiring solutions and we’re thrilled that we’re quickly becoming their go-to Web site.”

Urban Interns mainly focuses on pairing interns with small businesses, which often need help with errands, online research and organizing files, but usually don’t have the funding to hire a full-time worker. The site matches interns and employers based on the hours available, tasks involved and whether the position is paid or not.

Urban Interns allows employers to search the site’s database for prospective candidates and contact them or post a job and have candidates respond through the contact information they provide. Job seekers are able to have employers contact them for jobs or search the database and apply for positions. Users also can read and comment on the site’s blog, which provides ideas, tools and resources for finding, hiring and managing interns.

In May, the company added a slew of additional features to the site for employers, which are designed to give greater transparency when choosing the candidates they’d like to connect with. Additional features include resume-viewing capability, new job classifications, the ability to create job and profile expiration dates and the ability to delete jobs and profiles.

Employers who wish to pay $39.95 will be able to post one job opening, which will remain active for 30 days, as well as receive unlimited access to contact people in the database for 30 days.

Urban Interns also recently created a premium listing product, which allows job seekers to supercharge their listing, differentiate themselves in the marketplace and have access to career-related content and discounts for $12.95. As part of that, the site has teamed up with Lindsey Pollack to create podcasts for premium members.

The site remains free for intern seekers who simply want to post their profiles and resumes, as well as for employers and potential interns who want to search the site.

Although Urban Interns currently only serves the New York area, it hopes to add positions in other cities later this year.

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