🌻 Earlywork 2.0 Begins
Our manifesto on the changing world of early careers
This newsletter will be quite unlike your usual Earlywork weekly.
We're taking a different turn with this newsletter, so kick back with a beverage of choice as we take a trip down memory lane.
Earlywork officially started in September 2020 as a "cheeky lil' side project" to bring more visibility to junior roles in startups and to help young people land a role at these cool companies.
Our (usually) fortnightly newsletter slowly spread the word about Earlywork...
Special shoutout to the 5 superfans who have read every edition of the Earlywork newsletter, Joel Springer, Lucas Leung, Matthew Tsang, Joel Epshteyn, and of course, Dan’s mum, Shirley 🧡
By March 2021, we tripled our headcount from 1 to 3 - now there's a sexy vanity metric for the slide deck - and said hello to Jono and Marina.
In uncovering a social gap for young people challenging conventional career narratives, we deepened our project from a one-way newsletter to a multiplayer, co-creational community of 892 awesome young people (and counting!).
Your stories, passion and belief filled us with the excitement and courage to think bigger about the role we can play in shaping how young people think about their careers.
If you’re reading this for the first time and thinking “Who dis?”, chuck us a cheeky subscribe to catch up on the journey 👇
🎉 Introducing Earlywork 2.0
For each of us, the world of careers is a 10+ year problem space, and we're confident changing the way people think about their careers, at scale, is one of the most profoundly impactful things we can do with our small slice of time on this beautiful blue marble.
We are buzzed to be building something in this space, and these are the long term dreams/memes we're shooting for in our journey:
🌏 Our mission:
We believe that every young person should find meaning in the work that they do and make a positive dent on the planet.
🔭 Our vision:
Earlywork is creating the global home for young people challenging the careers of today and creating the careers of tomorrow.
🧭 Values by Earlywork
As we enter this next phase of the Earlywork journey, it was mission critical for us to come together as a team and define the core principles we stand for in the world we're trying to shape.
There are many ways to shoot for a mission and vision, but your values as a company define:
Who do you hire?
What products do you build?
What markets do you go after?
What decisions do you make?
Who do you collaborate with?
And equally important is the path you deliberately don't pursue, even if a viable business opportunity exists.
That's why before publicly launching our evolution, we came together post-lockdown in the Royal Botanic Garden of Sydney to spar as a team on the values that define the way we create and collaborate.
After individually ruminating and brainstorming, we came together and decided to find the common 'buckets' of values among the thoughts in our minds:
From there, we whittled it down to the 5 defining principles in how we want to grow Earlywork:
Introducing, Values by Earlywork…
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1. Chase The Long Tail 🐶
We believe that every young person deserves a meaningful career.
Earlywork will always strive to democratise critical career information and resources for young people looking to solve unsolved problems, regardless of their background or journey so far.
2. The World Is Our Team 🌏
We are fundamentally a multiplayer company. The world is a positive-sum game, and every "competitor" is also a collaborator towards a common goal.
We ask ourselves "How can we help young people build a meaningful career and make a positive dent on the planet?"
In solving that problem, great ideas can come from anywhere.
3. Build For Tomorrow 🔮
We create with a long-term lens.
It's not just about who we help today, but equally, the downstream impact on the broader system in which we operate.
We always ask: “Are we improving human wellbeing and creating a more equitable career landscape?”
Great potential lies in uncharted territories, but in seeking out the hidden truths, growth and comfort do not coexist.
4. Open Mind, Stay Kind 🧡
We're not afraid to challenge one another in sharpening our hypotheses about the world. First and foremost, this must come from a place of kindness, trust and mutual respect.
We seek to straddle honesty and empathy in everything we do.
Proactively driving hard conversations is one half of the job. Listening to learn is the other.
5. Embrace Your Quirky Turkey 🦃
We want to define a world where work and play intersect, and in doing so, we strive to create a social fabric of honest, vulnerable and vibrant human connection.
To engage with each other at a richer layer beyond the job-to-be-done sparks joy, and this lively spirit ripples through our content, community & beyond.
Tech & startups are exciting, but fundamentally, we are human first, tech second (please don't hurt us, future AI overlords).
🎨 We’ve got a brand new look to match
As some of you might've already noticed, we've levelled up our brand identity to give a stronger voice to our mission, vision and values.
Our brand colours have a bit more pop but stay true to our optimistic and youthful energy, and our new logo speaks to our focus on challenging the conventional conversation on careers (did you C what we did there).
While we were at it, we gave our website a brand new coat of paint too!
Check it out at earlywork.co! We're pretty proud of it!
✨ Say hello to Gigs & Talent by Earlywork
In moving towards our mission and vision, here's what we've decided to create...
Fundamentally, we believe the early-career job-seeking process is broken. Generic cover letters, "5 years experience" for entry-level roles, random recruiter DM's from the other side of the world and the list goes on...
Over time, we've built meaningful relationships with enthusiastic young people, fast-growing startups, VCs & social impact enterprises and we've been intently documenting pain points around job-seeking and recruiting for young talent.
Even early on, a key signal we've seen is the power of curation in providing visibility to the career opportunities of tomorrow. 🔮
💼 Gigs by Earlywork
Introducing Australia & New Zealand's dedicated job board for early-career roles in the tech, startup & social impact space.
For candidates & companies alike, cut through the sea of roles on LinkedIn and other platforms to find the ones relevant to you, including filtering by company size and problem space.
So next time you’re looking for that next-generation early-stage blockchain venture, health-tech startup or later-stage sustainability enterprise, kick off your job-seeking journey with Gigs by Earlywork. 😍
👋 Founders, hiring managers & recruiters, you can share your roles for free today.
If you’re looking for some extra love on your listings, we're launching with an exclusive discount code for the first month of your premium Gigs listing. Use EARLY30 to get 30% off 💰
🚀 Talent by Earlywork
Get discovered for roles, without applying. Say goodbye to awkward, spray & pray cold messaging.
Have your profile shared with Australia and New Zealand's top tech, startup & social impact employers in the Earlywork partner network.
The best part... it's completely free 🤯
So how does it actually work 🤔
📩 Submit a Listing: All you need to do to be featured is fill out your profile on our quick candidate form to help us understand your skills, experiences and interests, in order to connect you with relevant roles.
📙 Get Added to the Talent Directory: Once you've completed that, you're instantly added to our exclusive talent directory for Earlywork partner companies.
🤝Get Intros: From there, if the Earlywork team finds a suitable match for you, we'll make an intro, or partner companies may find you and reach out directly!
🤝 Interested in collaborating or getting involved with the Earlywork community? Shoot us a message here.
🍵 Vibed with this piece? Buy us a cheeky herbal tea!
😍 Want more FREE career resources? Be sure to check out the Earlywork Resource Hub for even more free resources on landing a role in tech/startups.
🤔 Got career questions? Join the Earlywork Slack Community to get access to the newest job listings & tech/startup news + start and join conversations about careers, startups, tech, and job applications!
Ciao for now,
Team Earlywork (Dan, Jono & Marina)
Email | LinkedIn | Twitter
Hiring or know somebody who is? Fill out this form here to have your role(s) featured 😁
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Nice stuff guys ! 🤩
Keen to keep seeing this awesome community growing 🚀