Want a startup job but don’t have coding skills? Lynxsy might help you find one

College graduation should be the moment when new workers feel their most prepared to take on a risky job proposition. Sadly, debt pushes a lot of college students in the direction of conservative decisions, and many of the people advising them also push for gigs with firmer roots. For students looking to really experience having a say in building something, though, they could be missing out on a chance to really help an enterprise take shape.
That’s where Lynxsy comes in.
The new startup helps recent grads without technical skills find jobs within startup companies.
Lynxsy wants to do the work that Fortune 500 companies have the bandwidth to do but startups don’t: recruiting on college campuses, while students are looking, and giving students a chance to work in a place where they can have, what Lynxsy’s cofounders call, a second-family feeling at work.
The Williamsburg-based company operates from one of Green Desk’s outposts. Two of its three cofounders are former startup hiring managers themselves. Susan Zheng is an alumna of Tough Mudder and Connie Wong is formerly of MeetMoi. The technical cofounder is Quentin Tai.
“Our focus on non-technical talent is the really defining part of what we do,” Zheng said, during a recent phone call with the founders. “There’s a huge amount of companies that are tackling the technical problem.”
She estimated that non-technical roles, such as sales, community and operations, make up as much as 60 percent of the openings at startups.
The Techstars alums report that their strategy is gaining traction. “We’ve worked with over 400 companies. Companies like SeatGeek and Casper,” Zheng said. “Companies that are rapidly expanding and providing really great opportunities for young professionals.”
Applicants get picked by Lynxsy, which then sets them up with interviews at startups tailored to fit them. If accepted, the applicant goes through a trial period and, if it works out, they get hired by the company. That said, every new hire goes through a somewhat unofficial probationary period. Founders we’ve spoken to have been clear that you can’t keep staff around that don’t fit. So it’s not clear how the trial period is any different than real-world startup hires.
To build visibility with startups now, the team is holding office hours at coworking spaces. They aren’t just telling people about Lynxsy, but also offering their insights as past hiring managers. It’s an approach similar to that used by Twilio’s Rob Spectre, in setting up “brain trusts” at college hackathons. Zheng will be at DUMBO Startup Lab on May 13.
We’ve profiled several Brooklyn companies tackling the recruitment problem. Roletroll is one that goes directly at technical talent, but WorkZeit, JobSuitors and Queby are also more broad, working to reinvent the job search itself.
Recruiting is a hot topic for startups. Check out Technical.ly’s cross-market ebook, Beyond Recruiting.
Lynxsy secured an $800,000 seed round in a convertible note, according to Zheng and Wong, from Great Oaks, The Vedas Group and others in October. Both Wong and Zheng live in the East Village. Tai lives in Bushwick.