Arlington-Based Snagajob Acquires PeopleMatter

Editor’s Note: Sponsored by Monday Properties and written by ARLnow.com, Startup Monday is a weekly column that profiles Arlington-based startups and their founders, plus other local technology happenings. The Ground Floor, Monday’s office space for young companies in Rosslyn, is now open. The Metro-accessible space features a 5,000-square-foot common area that includes a kitchen, lounge area, collaborative meeting spaces, and a stage for formal presentations.

A growing company in Arlington is set to get even bigger with a recent acquisition.

Snagajob, an Arlington-based tech company that helps employers find hourly workers and vice versa, announced last week it acquired PeopleMatter, an HR software business that aids employers in hiring, screening and managing employees.

The joint company now has “tools for candidate sourcing, screening, tracking, hiring, onboarding, training, scheduling and performance management,” according to a press release.

Peter Harrison, CEO of Snagajob, said the acquisition makes for a “very nice synergy” between the
two companies.

“We [ensure] workers get the kind of jobs they want and employers get the kind of candidates they want, and then PeopleMatter has this platform for managing everything beyond that,” Harrison said. “There’s a great overlap.”

Harrison added that although Snagajob has about 200,000 and PeopleMatter has about 50,000 employer clients in the retail, hotel and restaurant segment, only a small number of the two company’s clients actually use both products. Thus, the acquisition presents a “great opportunity” for collaboration.

The company’s next project — and where it sees much potential for growth — is a new mobile scheduling app called Snagashift.

With Snagashift, Harrison said he envisions a future where hourly workers can not only find jobs with large employers but also manage and swap their shifts there.

“I think this is the really interesting opportunity that PeopleMatter will enable,” Harrison said. “In the near future we’re going to have the ability to, having gathered enough information about your work history, let you pick up shifts… even if it’s a completely different franchisee.”

And that seamless approach to scheduling could lead to big growth, Harrison said. “Think of it as sort of Snapchat for shifts,” he explained.

“We got 3 million people hired last year. If only 10 percent of those people managed the sharing across employers, our business would be ten times its current size,” he added. “That on its own is a giant avenue for growth for us.”

To accommodate its growth, the company recently filled a number of offices in the new MakeOffices Clarendon co-working space. As the company grows, Harrison said he expects to  add even more workers to the company’s offices in Arlington.

“We’re already up to about 80 people and I expect we’ll be well north of 100 by the end of the year,” Harrison said. “We’re taking new space that will scale to 250 or 300 people. This is going to be our hub.”