Page 50 - Forbes - USA (November 2019)

CONTRARIAN ENTREPRENEURS

By Vicky Valet Photograph by Michael Prince for Forbes

LinkedIn for

46 the Working Class

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O How Jobcase is building a $1 billion social networking site for warehouse employees and waitresses.
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a social media job-search platform for blue-collar Man for the Job
and service-industry workers. Jobcase founder
“That site literally changed my life,” says Con- Frederick Goff at
his headquarters
treras, 55. A free sign-up granted her access to in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. In 1991
millions of job listings and a stream of help- he hitchhiked from
ful posts written by strangers, many of whom Toledo to New York
City to land his first
were contending with the isolating experience of full-time job.
searching for work. Through a link posted by a
Sasha Contreras despaired member, in late July 2017 she got a customer ser-
when she had to quit her $12-an-hour Xerox cus- vice job that paid $10 an hour. Two years later
tomer service job and uproot her life in Yelm, Jobcase led her to another customer service job
Washington. Her husband was starting work as a that paid $13 an hour. Though she’s not looking
chef at a casino in rural Mississippi in February to make a move, she logs on to Jobcase daily. “If
2016. A year later she discovered he was having an I see something that touches me, I’ll respond be-
affair after 17 years of marriage. Unemployed and cause I remember what it was like to be looking,”
alone, she spent every waking moment searching she says.
Google for jobs. Then she stumbled on Jobcase, “We’ve got to do this for everybody,” says Fred-

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