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Business & Tech

New Social Site Showcases Skills

In an effort to break the unemployment rate in the area, three Beach Cities friends launch a new website to help people find jobs.

Three lifelong friends from the Beach Cities are looking online to transform the job market—one skill at a time.

Manhattan Beach natives Ryan McKenzie, Morgan Ralls, and Casey Mauge have launched a hybrid website called SideSkills.com, which combines the benefits of social networking with online job searching.

"With SideSkills, you’re kind of the hunted—you set up a profile, you get connected with your friends, establish your skills, and then if you’re offering a skill that somebody needs, you just sit back and get invitations to work," McKenzie, 29, said.

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Ralls, 29, told Patch that the goal behind the website is "to be a part of turning unemployment around."

California's jobless rate was 11.9 percent in September and nationwide it was 9.1 percent, the California Employment Development Department announced last month.

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McKenzie, Ralls, and Mauge, 28, have been friends since they were children. The trio attended the same schools all the way up until graduating from Mira Costa High.

"We loved going to , El Sombrero and La Penita as kids," Ralls said. "All of us participated in AYSO and MBYB as kids."

After high school, they went off on their separate paths—McKenzie to Colorado, Ralls to Long Beach, and Mauge to Arizona—all to start their own respective careers.

But then years later, the three found themselves creating SideSkills, an idea born out of McKenzie’s other business: WebWorks and Graphics.

"I had a concept that had been sitting in the back of my mind for awhile and it was basically a way that people could list what they’re good at, whether professionally or for fun, what your skills are," McKenzie said.

After about a year of brainstorming and designing, SideSkills launched in August and has steadily grown. Mauge serves as the chief operating officer of SideSkills while Ralls is the chief networking officer.

Here's how people can use the website to find work: Users first create an account on the site, where they can upload a photo of themselves and list their skills. 

SideSkills boasts more than 900 skills to choose from, according to the site. Resumes and portfolios can be uploaded to a profile as well.

Users can offer full-time, part-time, or one-time jobs to other friends or colleagues on the site. Those users then can accept or deny the job offers.

"We have three types of invitations people can receive, full time, part time, and contract work. If I type in that I want a graphic designer and it’s a one-time job and I want to pay $500, I’ll see who has that skill and is available for one-time jobs and that pay and basically hire them right there," McKenzie said.

Users also could choose to utilize the social networking aspect of the site to share job opportunities with their friends by using the "pass it on" feature.

"Say you get a job offer that you don’t think you’re fit for or don’t need and you might know somebody who might want that job.  You could go to your list of friends and pass it on and help them out," Ralls said.

After jobs or projects are completed, the employer can leave feedback and comments on an employee’s profile page for other employers to see.

"That’s basically where the accountability comes in. If somebody you hired on SideSkills did such a good job for you that you want to recommend him, all you have to do is click the star on his profile," McKenzie said.

Employers also leave feedback by rating the employee on their level of communication, scheduling, and the final outcome of their work, on a scale of one to 10.

Ralls said that SideSkills just hired employees for marketing to help grow the website, which as of last week had more than 2,000 users. 

New features have been getting added to the site as the team thinks of them, and more are likely to come. The website is currently free to sign up, though McKenzie said that the team will be introducing a paid subscription model "very soon."

For about $5 a month, users will be able to access all the features of SideSkills, including accepting job offers. For part-time and one-time jobs, employers will also be able to pay their employee through the website itself.  

Similar job networking sites have become popular on the Web, such as LinkedIn. Craigslist also has served as a platform to find work, but Mauge said SideSkills differs. 

"What we were looking for was to get hired and hire people through the same system and to do it in a more reliable manner than what exists right now," he said. "SideSkills is basically a culmination of the best parts of other websites and we’re trying to revolutionize how people find and source work."

This article was originally posted on Hermosa Beach Patch.

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