As Brad Brisan watched his fiancée search for an elementary school teaching job he saw, firsthand, how frustrating and time consuming the process was. Many of the school districts, he noted, only post their employment opportunities on their district website, while others use education-specific sites to advertise openings.
To search all possibilities Ashley Barbiero had to visit dozens of sites each day to stay on top of the current employment climate. Seeing her aggravation triggered Brisan’s entrepreneurial instincts, inspiring him to create Educate PA, a subscription-based job search service that sends a complete listing of all current kindergarten through 8th-grade positions to job seekers’ inboxes.
Educate PA believes it shouldn’t be a full-time job searching for a teaching position”
Graduating from Elizabethtown in 2009 with a double concentration in finance and entrepreneurship—he was the winner of the 2009 Wall Street Journal Award at Elizabethtown College—Brisan, of Wyomissing, said his classes gave him useable knowledge to help set up the business. Partnered with that, his strong drive to become successful and his entrepreneurial mindset helped fuel the idea, he said.
“I always had the goal and passion to start a business,” so while working fulltime as a portfolio advisor with Herbein Wealth Management, Brisan tried his hand at exploring the labyrinth of the K-8 job search process.
“Many people are familiar with the main websites that list teaching jobs (PA REAP, PA Educator),” Brisan said, noting that although they are “fantastic resources and a great way to find job openings,” school districts must agree to use the service to post jobs. In addition, the present job search sites cover only a fraction of the districts in Pennsylvania. “PA Educator has 132 participating schools that use their website to post jobs,” he said, noting that PA REAP covers only about 80 public school districts. With more than 500 public school districts with possible job openings, those numbers are a drop in the proverbial bucket.
The goal of Educate PA, Brisan said, is to provide a subscription that provides subscribers a way to receive all of the K-8 openings in Pennsylvania, saving them countless hours of searching.
Brisan met his fiancée, Barbiero, at Elizabethtown College when he was a senior and she was a first-year student. Barbiero later transferred to The Pennsylvania State University, graduating with a degree in elementary education in May 2013. Watching her actively search for a job over the past year set the wheels in motion and, from start to finish, Brisan’s endeavor took just five months. “This included website design, content, payment system integration, performing an entity name search (to ensure Educate PA was still available) and, ultimately, filing for an LLC with the state government.”
The official launch of Educate PA was just two weeks ago on Jan. 6, 2014. Barbiero helped him launch the site and will run the business moving forward. Already, the site has several subscribers and had gotten positive feedback from job seekers and from colleges and universities across Pennsylvania. “We hope not only to target individuals, but also institutions,” he said, pointing out that “it is the ultimate goal of any college or university to help graduates find jobs.”
Short term, the business will focus on Pennsylvania, but there are plans to expand from K-8 to K-12 jobs in the future.
“Educate PA believes it shouldn’t be a full-time job searching for a teaching position,” Brisan said. Our slogan, ‘You Teach. We Search.’ summarizes our business and mission – To simplify your job search by saving you hours of searching, thereby helping you pursue and achieve your ultimate goal – Finding your dream teaching position.”