720: Build a Function That Drives | Beth Clymer, CFO, Jobcase, Inc.

“Too often, CFOs will say, ‘I don’t need that extra analyst’ or ‘I don’t need an extra accounting manager.’ But don’t skimp on resources. The impact that a strong finance organization can have throughout the business is massive, and those resources will almost always pay for themselves,” explains Clymer, who perhaps sounds more like a veteran CFO or a finance leader with multiple CFO tours of duty than an executive who entered the CFO office for the first time only in 2019.

However, prior to entering the C-suite at Jobcase, a jobs-oriented social media platform, Clymer had invested a decade with Bain Capital, where as an operating partner she had spent her days advising C-suite executives from the venture capital firm’s portfolio of consumer-oriented businesses.  

“In my time at Bain Capital, I found that I was very often drawn to the parts of business transformation that had a lot to do with the office of the CFO,” recalls Clymer, who provides us with a lengthy list of typical challenges that frequently summoned her involvement at the firm, including finance team–building, KPI alignment, capital strategy, and business restructurings.

Still other items from her past also set her apart from finance’s more traditional corporate rank-and-file, including a nearly 4-year stint as a consultant with Parthenon Group, as well as a number of Ivy League degrees.

Perhaps not surprisingly, you get the feeling that it was Clymer’s experience at Bain Capital that today accents the delivery of her responses in a manner more akin to that of an objective outsider than of a CFO who has climbed the more traditional corporate ladder.

It’s a delivery that makes her final piece of advice sound all the more compelling.

Advises Clymer: “Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. Really focus on surrounding yourself with the quantity and quality of talent that will allow your team to really help to drive the business.” –Jack Sweeney

We have about 20 million monthly active unique users and over 110 million registered members. We’re the third largest career resource, according to Comscore, behind Indeed and ZipRecruiter, when you look at where people look for jobs. People are always so surprised to hear this. That’s the reaction that I always get when I cite our scale.

People say, “What? I’ve never heard of Jobcase. Why is that?”

Two reasons. One, we’re still a rapidly growing business, and there’s a lot of work that we’re doing right now to build a consumer-facing brand. But also, we are focused on the nonprofessional workforce—the 80% of the workforce that is not your CFOs or your private equity operating partners or your CPAs and so forth, but instead are the individuals who manage the store down the street or work on a construction site or at the water treatment plant near you. These people represent 80% of the workforce.

People like to throw around words like “blue-collar” and “hourly,” and we do serve blue-collar and hourly workers, but not just them. Many of our employees or workers are hourly, but many are also salaried. Many of our workers do not have college degrees, but 15% of them do. So, the most common way that people describe us is to say that we are the LinkedIn for everyone else. This is really an imperfect characterization, but it probably helps you to understand the world of people whom we serve. If you need help and support in your work life, whether it’s in finding a job or in something else, Jobcase is the place to come make it happen.

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