How a 22 year-old female online business owner is the outlier on the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research's graph.
PRLog - Nov. 1, 2013 - SYDNEY, Australia -- 22 year-old Genevieve George has never been one to crunch figures.
She's the Founder and CEO of the successful start-up OneShift, an online jobs platform which matches employees with employers, and has never looked at her age or gender as potential holding-back factors.
"I know it's not that common for a 22 year-old female to run an online business but I had an idea and I had a strong feeling that this idea would work out," Ms George said.
Indeed, it's not that common. A report conducted by the government's Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research revealed that 68.5 per cent of small business operators were male and 31.5 per cent were female. Moreover, the greatest number of business owners are aged 25 to 54 years old (28.2 per cent). In 2007, business operators aged 20-24 years represented just 2.5 per cent of all owners.
"Obviously one of the difficult challenges for a younger business owner is finding the funding to back your idea and to prove that your idea can really work. OneShift started off as a free WordPress site and was embraced predominately by restaurant, bar and café owners in Sydney," Ms George said.
Launching the original OneShift idea on a free website meant that Genevieve could test the response and potential success before making the decision of whether to invest in developing an independent platform.
And her idea has paid off. OneShift is now used by 217,000 users and a wide variety of businesses all around Australia as staff for casual jobs can be found quickly and efficiently.
Just this year, Genevieve's OneShift venture has been awarded the 2013 Winner of the Australian Business Award for three different categories; Innovation, Enterprise and E-Business. She was the 2013 Winner of the Anthill 30Undeer30 which recognises entrepreneurs under the age of 30 for their outstanding entrepreneurial endeavours and she was a finalist for Australia's Small Business Awards.
"I do think that many young, business-savvy individuals lack the support and assistance to launch their ideas into the real world of business but it's not impossible. You do need a strong idea and you need to be able to let this idea go wild - change it, shape it, develop it. Finally you need a lot of motivation and persistence," Ms George said.
About OneShift:
OneShift is an online part time jobs network that matches employees with employers for one-off shifts, casual work or even permanent employment. It is free to join and to review job seekers, and just $10 to get into contact with the employees of the business' choice.
Led by Genevieve George, OneShift started as a venture to match working holiday candidates to employers in tourism hotspots and has expanded to a full range of industries including retail, construction, beauty services and healthcare among others.
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OneShift Founder Defies Statistics And Goes On To Win Australian Business Awards
November 01, 2013 at 03:09 AM EDT
