App helps overlooked workers find jobs in a pandemic
2020 was a hard year for many Colorado workers. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic led to many people losing their jobs, and those challenges remain in 2021—the U.S. recently lost 140,000 jobs, the first monthly drop since spring of 2020.
To help workers experiencing joblessness, a group of young entrepreneurs created an application called Chamba, slang for "work" or "job" in Spanish.
The app was designed to help Hispanic and Latino workers find jobs. The latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show Hispanic and Latino workers had some of the highest rates of unemployment in 2020.
The app’s creators envisioned Chamba as a way to reach a group that is usually overlooked in online job postings.
“There are a lot of job boards available for people, but the problem that we saw with these jobs boards is that they usually cater to the white collar people who have careers, people who have professional degrees,” explained Diego Montemayor, founder and CEO of Chamba. “And most of the people who were losing their jobs didn’t necessarily meet this criteria. So we thought really deeply, ‘How can we help people who do not have a professional career or a professional degree?’”
The application was created for people with “blue collar” jobs, Montemayor said, especially those in the restaurant and construction industries that have been at risk in this pandemic.
“We saw that unemployment was rising tremendously, so we decided to make a common place for jobs and workers to meet and this is how we created Chamba,” said Montemayor.
Corina Hierro, Chamba's spokesperson, says that since they created this application in April of 2020, more than 17,000 thousand users have signed up. The app works on both Apple and Android devices.
All users need to sign up is a name, email, and a list of their skills. Employers can also use the app to post new jobs and contact potential future employees.
“The information that we collect is very basic and we use it to better match your profile with a job,” Hierro said.
Montemayor continued, “This mission that we have is to help people earn back their livelihood, especially here in Colorado.”
To learn more about the app and how to sign up, click here.