More than 200 Plymouth students have signed up to use an app which finds them shifts in the city’s bars and restaurants - in just a week since it launched.
Stint, a new digital employment platform which helps connect students with flexible work at hospitality businesses, launched in Plymouth in May 2021.
The launch came as campuses across the 海角视频, including in Britain’s Ocean City, reopened to in-person teaching following a tough year for students, and the hospitality sector, because of three lockdowns.
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In its first week operating in Plymouth more than 200 students from the , Plymouth College of Art and Plymouth Marjon University signed up to find work. They are already finding shifts at several Plymouth independent hospitality businesses, including pubs, restaurants and cafes.
It is expected that thousands of city students will eventually sign up to the app which is intended to help them earn cash while studying and also fill an employment void in the hospitality sector.
Plymouth students Jessica Jones and Monty Jackson have been appointed as “campus coordinators” to help city students sign up and ensure they are allowed to work in the 海角视频.
Both of them also use the app - which has the strap “turn your downtime into fast money” - with Ms Jones explaining she has three three-hour shifts in the second week of operation, two on one day, with a pub and a restaurant in Plymouth city centre.
For Ms Jones, a 19-year-old criminology and criminal justice student at the University of Plymouth, her involvement began when she placed a message on LinkedIn saying she wanted part-time employment.
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Staff at Stint messaged her and she was soon undergoing training to become a coordinator with the fledgling organisation. She now helps other students become involved and checks their credentials to make sure they have permission to work in the 海角视频.
“We’ve had lots of students sign up,” she said. “We had more than 200 in a week and expect to get into the thousands in the next few months.”
The app works by the student inputting their availability and then being matched to a business that needs staff. There are also “stand-by” stints, where students are alerted if someone else drops out.
Ms Jones said students can expect to be paid £8.92 an hour and work three-hour shifts, in independent businesses normally no more than a 20 minute walk from the main university campus.
“We want to support local businesses as much as possible, we are helping them and they are helping us,” she said. “At the moment it is only hospitality: pubs, cafes and restaurants.
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“I have been doing a lot of waiting, clearing tables, polishing cutlery, a bit of dishwashing,” she said. “But I could take orders, for example.
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“It’s good,” she added. “You can put in shifts whenever you want. It’s the future of hospitality.”
Stint is the brainchild of brothers Sol and Sam Schlagman and was launched in London in 2018 while they were both students at UCL.
Initially they recruited classmates and organised shifts manually via WhatsApp and Facebood groups but soon the business was developed.
It started with a team of five, but now has a team of 70 working “on a mission to revolutionize staffing on the high street and transform the way students earn money”.
Stint is now launching in over 30 towns and cities across the country, after the brothers raised funding to grow the business, and students in the 海角视频 are set to earn about £200,000 through the app in the next few weeks. It boasts that students need no experience, no CV, no equipment and there is no application process.