'Bus Stop Mamas' introduces parents to employers with work that fits their busy schedule

INTERVIEWER: I'm assuming you've heard of a matchmaker, someone who connects two people, usually for romance, but Mary Kay Ziniewicz is a matchmaker of a different sort. She's the founder and CEO of a new organization called Bus Stop Mamas. She's connecting mothers who need flexibility to take care of their kids with work that fits their schedules.

Now this sounded like a very interesting idea given that during the pandemic, women left the workforce at higher rates than men mostly to stay home and take care of children. Our producer Melissa Townsend talked with Ziniewicz about the startup and how it's going.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Mary Kay, thank you for coming on to Minnesota Now.

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Thank you. Excited to be here.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Yeah. So tell me about Bus Stop Mamas. I know it's a tech platform, but how does a mom connect? Walk me through the process.

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Yeah, so we're a two-sided marketplace serving employers to connect with moms and moms to connect with employers. Moms, it's free for moms to join. They go to our platform, they fill out a little bit of information, and then, bam, they're in.

And then for employers, employers are seeking access to this back load of talent, which is what we provide them access to. And employers post their job descriptions right on our platform. Those job descriptions go out to our moms-- hey, mamas, here are our new jobs for the week-- and moms review and they self-select. They decide if a job fits their schedule, their interests, their skill sets, and if it does they simply click a button introduce me.

We have moms with all different types of skill sets. We have PhDs, GEDs, and everything in between looking for all different types of work. So we have postings for lawyers. We have postings for administrative assistants. We have postings for customer service people, scientists, engineers. You name it, we post it.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: And so I'm just thinking, with my own children, as they grew out of infant stage and we could go to preschool and then, of course, public education, I became much more available to work. So is that what you're seeing with your moms?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Yeah. But everyone's different, so we have moms from all different backgrounds. We have moms who don't have the same type of support system. So when we talk about our moms with kids in a car seat, moms with kids in the bus seat, moms with kids in the driver's seat, and beyond, it gives employers a real good sense of what she's available for.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Wow.

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: As your children grow up, they need to in different ways. But every situation is not the same. So we let moms decide. We don't make any assumptions about who she is or what she wants. We let her drive that.

So when she sees the job she likes that fits her time, fits her availability, fits her interests she just simply clicks introduce me, and then that employer gets to meet her. And that employer wants to meet her, which is so important for me to share with moms every day is they really want you

MELISSA TOWNSEND: It reminds me about that skill set. Nobody puts mom on their resume and writes down everything that they learn to master as a parent. But tell me a little bit about that. What do you feel like is the skill set of a mom specifically?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Yeah. So we do have a lot of skill sets that go with parenting and motherhood, and we don't always have an opportunity to describe what we've learned, but importantly, we don't always know what we've learned. And how does that translate into a job?

Well, it's, again, different for everyone, and there are plenty of jobs. So we have moms that want jobs that are maybe something that is going to be simple for them to do. And maybe this same mom tried to apply for a simple job and got rejected for it in the past because our systems are all automated.

And actually the way Bus Stop Mamas was conceived was when I was standing at the bus stop for the first time with all these other moms in the neighborhood. My daughter was 10 at the time because my husband was the stay-at-home dad. And then I got to stand out at the bus stop, and that's when I noticed all these women who were very experienced had left promising careers to care for their children. And here they all were.

Many of them had attempted to go back to work but got quick rejections or no rejections at all, and their self-esteem suffered. So you asked about skill sets and what we gain as moms, there's a lot that happens in this process of motherhood where we feel like we can't get back. When the skill sets that we have from our education, whatever education was our previous job, and then we add all of the efficiencies that we learned being a mom on top of that, but what employers are gaining through our platform is access to this back load of talent that has been missed and overlooked because of these gaps in their resume.

I feel so strongly to communicate with moms that you have a lot of skills, and employers desperately want you back under their roof. We work with companies as large as Boston Scientific that really and truly want to find ways to not only get her under their roof again but to keep her there. So having a way to retain moms is also very important to a lot of employers.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: How many women and businesses are you working with at Bus Stop Mamas.

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: So we work with about 800 businesses, and we have over 12,000 moms in our network. And our network grows every day.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Do you feel like you need more businesses or--

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Yes. Moms want remote work. So what COVID really did was push out those moms that wanted to work when their kids were at school. Suddenly we're no longer able to do that. And with that, there are 3.5 million women that exited the workplace.

With that came a new marketplace, which is these same women aren't real sure about going back even during that 9:00 to 3:00-- we call it the 9:00 to 3:00 movement-- even during those school hours when those moms wanted to work, life became more complicated when they were cooking, cleaning, masking, sanitizing, and teaching their kids around the clock. And the new world is we don't know when our kid's going to be sick again, and we have to keep our kids home for the safety of all when they're sick.

Our behaviors have all changed from early 2020 to today. So our moms that have kids in the bus seat category desperately want remote work. And every time we have an employer post a remote job, those jobs go [SNAPPING]. They're like-- they go so quickly.

So when you ask about do you need more jobs, yes. We need more jobs within every job title under the roof.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Are you seeing racial diversity among the moms working with Bus Stop Mamas?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Absolutely. That racial breakdown is very fascinating because I've found that people are surprised when I share the demographics. The largest demographic of stay-at-home moms is Latino women, and then it is Asian women then Black women and then white women.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: And so that's reflected in the moms who are working with Bus Stop Mama?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Yes.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: And how many women have gotten jobs through Bus Stop Mamas?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: We have had over-- well, about 400 moms have been employed through Bus Stop Mamas.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Over-- since 2019?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Yep.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: What about dads? Do you feel like dads need the same kind of service?

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: We have some dads in our network, and we used to actually say and dads too. And the real need-- and we love dads. I love dads. My husband was the stay-at-home dad. He does and did a lot.

But the truth is 43% of women exit their career after they have their first child. And that's been a static statistic for about 40 years. And then entered COVID. 3.5 million women exited their careers, and we know that number also goes up the more children you have for her.

So we focus on moms because we think we're solving a big problem that includes dads, but it's the majority of moms that we're speaking to.

MELISSA TOWNSEND: Well, this sounds like a really interesting project. It'll be interesting to see what you learn from all of this.

MARY KAY ZINIEWICZ: Thank you. Appreciate your time.

INTERVIEWER: That was Minnesota Now producer Melissa Townsend talking with Mary Kay Ziniewicz. She's the founder of the-- and CEO of Bus Stop Mamas. That's a Minnesota tech platform that introduces employers to job seekers who happen to be moms. You can find out more by going to BusStopMamas.com.