Sigal Spitzer knows how tough finding a job can be today.
A recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and alumnus of Shalhevet High School, Spitzer, 23, had a position waiting for her at a management consulting firm before the coronavirus pushed her start date to the end of summer. Because she never started the job, she was ineligible for unemployment benefits.
The experience inspired her to find a way to support those who are facing unemployment in an economy hit hard by the nationwide lockdown. So, together with her husband, Zachary Flamholz, and her brother Gilad, the trio created the online employment platform I Lost My Job to Coronavirus, which aims to connect the unemployed with opportunities and resources to help find employment.
The website launched in early April and to date has attracted several hundred users, Spitzer said. “Our goal,” she explained, “is to destigmatize unemployment and build communities.”
The website features a job search tool, a space for users to create personal profiles that can be viewed by job recruiters, and a chat function that attempts to create community around those seeking to rejoin the workforce.
“Our goal is to destigmatize unemployment and build communities.” — Sigal Spitzer
The site also has a virtual map for tracking unemployment trends. “We’re tackling the employment ecosystem affected by the coronavirus,” Spitzer said.
Spitzer asked Gilad, a 2020 graduate of Shalhevet who plans to do a gap year at Bar-Ilan University in Israel this fall, to help create the website. Gilad had taken a class in web development at Shalhevet and, wanting to improve his coding skills, agreed to design the site. Flamholz, a medical student at the Einstein Medical College in New York, also provided vision and strategic support for the site.
And with additional help from a group of college and high school interns, the three have been working out of Spitzer’s parents’ Beverlywood home, after Spitzer and Flamholz decided to return to Los Angeles from the East Coast at the onset of the quarantine.
Since then, they have all been working and living together under one roof, holding meetings at all hours in their pajamas. “It’s definitely taken over most of our family dinners,” Spitzer said.
With the outpouring of love and support motivating them, Spitzer said the trio is concentrating on improving the functionality of the site and adding new features, including career mentoring.
Visit the website here.
