Founded in 2021, One Work is changing the landscape of job search platforms by eliminating a step in the job search process for job seekers looking for mission-driven careers.
“Ultimately, our process is kind of informed by the psychology of happiness, and team performance and engagement, and what drives those are things like a sense of progress, adherence to a vision that’s bigger than yourself, really strong relationships,” says Greg Rancourt, the founder of One Work. And so I think that’s what really sets us apart is we’ve taken those sort of core concepts that are going to drive your success well into the future, past that point of hire, and brought it upfront to that hiring process.”
Take a moment to type in “job search” on Google. The first two results that pop up are going to be Indeed or LinkedIn. Though they have made a name for themselves as the go-to job search platforms because of their wide variety of job opportunities, there’s a puzzle piece they are missing – or, as Greg Rancourt, the founder of the startup job-search platform One Work, deems it as – “a personal mission.
The platform essentially seeks to filter based on what “mission resonates with you, whether it’s education, poverty, or sustainability,” says Rancourt.
The first step in a user’s journey to finding a job is selecting their mission. This first creates a space where job seekers are exposed to jobs that will not just put food on their plates but also where social impact is at the forefront of their business model.
The mind behind One Work, Greg Rancourt, had a background in aerospace engineering.
Which “theoretically, [had] nothing to do with HR tech,” says Rancourt. “But one of the things that were really important to me was social entrepreneurship and this idea of your business model to drive social impact.”
One Work has a small but mighty team that brings the company’s goal to fruition. Alexandria Hernandez leads the communication and marketing efforts, and Jacob Massaro leads software development. And although the startup is new to the scene,” we’ve been like kicking the idea around for a couple of years even prior to that,” says Rancourt. And so last year was really like the culmination of, like, let’s put some funding around it, let’s leave the jobs and try to make something that’s going to stick.”
One Work was created with the intention of helping people discover a career where their personal goals are fulfilled.
“We’re spending like a third of our lives at work,” says Rancourt. There are moments where you sit and think about how your job is “a really strong predictor of our personal happiness and, and satisfaction. We’re all searching for a purpose, and One Work makes career seekers one step closer to achieving this.”
We sat down with Greg Rancourt for a more in-depth look at what it took for One Work to become established and what the future holds for the platform.
News Bosses: For those who don’t quite understand the function or uses of this tool, can you elaborate on it in simple terms?
Greg Rancourt: The way I kind of look at it is if you go to another job posting website, whether it’s an Indeed or LinkedIn, or a Career Builder, or Monster, typically, you’re going to do a keyword search on job title or skills. And you might filter based on location. And our whole thing is we want to anchor in your personal mission. So we kind of filter based on what mission resonates with you, whether it’s education, poverty, or sustainability. We have nine on our platform right now, we’re adding them over time as we have more volume. So that’s kind of the first way to search.
And then the second thing that we’re adding is by function. So effectively, we’re trying to get you good alignment on your mission and your skills in two clicks. And then you can kind of prose those job postings the same as they would be on other websites. But now they’re filtered, so it’s something that really resonates with you.
News Bosses: What differentiates your company from other platforms like LinkedIn and indeed?
Greg Rancourt: Throwing no shade – and those are the companies that provide a good service. I think fundamentally, the reason we even look at it, the way we do, is we’re thinking about it as more than just the point of hire. We’re looking at your life for the subsequent however many numbers of years you’re going to be in that job and how you’re going to be successful in that job.
And so ultimately, our process is kind of informed by the psychology of happiness, and team performance and engagement, and what drives those are things a sense of progress, adherence to a vision that’s bigger than yourself, really strong relationships. And so I think that’s what really sets us apart is we’ve taken those sort of core concepts that are going to drive your success well into the future, past that point of hire, and brought it upfront to that hiring process. And that’s something that the other websites don’t think about.
News Bosses: With any company, starting up is always challenging. What were your challenges?
Greg Rancourt: The biggest one is we are bootstrapped, which basically means we’re self-funding. And so you don’t have a ton of money in the bank to go out and hire everyone that knows a bunch of expertise in their individual areas. So you end up wearing a lot of different hats. And I think one of the hardest things for me, especially early on was trying to be good enough and everything – get enough traction – bring on the people that we need. And so, I’m very fortunate to have Alex on my team doing marketing and Jake on my team doing software development because it eases a lot of the burden. And I get to bring on some people that have a little bit more expertise in areas that complement my own skills.
But everything gets way easier as soon as you get a team when you’re one person. Kind of have this big idea and this vision, and you can kind of get ahead of yourself because it takes a long time. And as soon as you get that, you’re really grounded, and you have the support structure you need.
News Bosses: Marketing is a big part of any company’s success. So how do you think marketing ties into what business you are running?
Greg Rancourt: So for One Work, specifically, what’s interesting is we almost see, it has evolved over time. But we now see ourselves as almost complementing employer branding, which is now also super popular, right? You’re not just selling your company externally to the customer base, now you’re trying to say, here’s why you really want to work at Lockheed Martin, internal employees. And so you’re almost marketing in words.
And so I think our branding has always been a strong suit of us; I think people kind of understand and resonate with our mission or values. And we look at further employers on our platform. Are they a One Work type of company? And are we complementary? And so I think we look at marketing from the perspective of how can we amplify their brand and vice versa because there’s this really strong values alignment that kind of serves as the foundation of that partnership.
News Bosses: What are some of the risks you have taken while building your platform?
Greg Rancourt: So risks. I mean, the biggest one that just kind of leaps out at you is the financial risks of it. So I went into it, prepared, set aside 100k, was gonna get kind of as far as we could, and see if we could build some traction around that pool of money. And I think the biggest risk I took, aside from just generally taking the leap into entrepreneurship, is we hired ahead, in some sense. So we brought on, at the time, two marketing teammates instead of one, which was our original intent. And we said, you know, let’s just lean forward and take this risk. See if we can generate more traction that way. And it paid off for us.
But that was definitely, we’re very, like, deliberate in the way we apply our activities throughout the day, right? We try not to lean too far over our feet unless we fall on our faces. And so I think like for us, even though like we’re notionally a hiring company, for us to kind of lean forward on the hiring, I think was one of the bigger risks we took.
News Bosses: Where do you see One Work in 5 years?
Greg Rancourt: Our goal is to become the destination to go find a job that aligns with your values and drives like that mission-driven talent, like on both sides of the market, whether you’re an employer or an employee like this is where you come to connect. We look at ourselves as like, that was like the point in time in which we made a hire.
We want to then look at, like, how do we help those companies be successful in driving their mission? Because ultimately, that’s where we’re coming from is like. If you took a list of the world’s biggest challenges today, how would you tackle those? In our mind, it comes down to how people are spending their time, and they’re spending a bulk of their time at work. So that’s like our pressure point and why we’re so focused on talent. But then it becomes like, how can we become part of those companies’ operations? So how can we like better support them?
And so today, it’s talent, but in the future, it might be like back office support, or it might be like building a community where people can kind of share best practices and collaborate across company lines to further their missions. So those are the sorts of things we’re looking at in the future. But ultimately, we want this to be a platform and a community where like if you want to change the world, this is where you want to be.
