Since John Ikenberry, President and Co Founder of HigherEdJobs, and his partners founded the company in 1996, it’s seen steady growth each and every year. 

In nearly two decades, Ikenberry’s company has expanded and now boasts over a million unique visitors to its website each month, and just last year posted almost 160,000 jobs for over 2,000 college universities. And while many think there’s a secret to success in the world of business, John recounts a cautious and straightforward approach to growth. 

When they founded the company in 1996, John and his two business partners were working for the development office at Penn State. In their search for next steps in their careers, they recognized that the web would be a much easier way to communicate job openings to potential applicants. “We identified a need,” said John. “Instead of flipping through hundreds of pages of leafy ads, you could go through quickly [on the web] and find what you’re looking for.” 

“[Back then], it was harder to find information on the opportunities,” John continued. “Probably a much smaller percentage of open positions were advertised nationally at that time.” 

John and his team decided to give the company a try (as a side job), got incorporated, and created an initial prototype of the website. 

After a few years of providing free service to employers and job seekers, they started selling banner ads to corporate advertisers to help support the website. In these first couple years, the team worked from their homes and just focused on building an audience for the website. 

Eventually they transitioned to a model in which employers were charged to post their job ads to the site. 

Once the company started to take off, around the spring of 1999, John and his partners left Penn State to pursue their business venture full time. 

Turning your hobby or side job into your fulltime job is a big move. John lists three things for entrepreneurs to consider before making the leap. “You have to feel confident in your business; confident in your business idea; and confident that you can run your business for a profit.” 

In the spring of 2000, John and his team moved to the Innovation Park business incubator. They started in what was then called the Innova Zone: a group of small, individual units with shared resources. 

As the company steadily grew, the addition of more staff in the sales, IT, and administration departments became necessary. Needing more space, the company moved in 2008 to 328 Innovation Boulevard, its current location. 

While John recognizes the company is in a competitive industry, he’s confident in the future of HigherEdJobs. 

“We have built up a nice audience,” he said. “I think we do what we do very well, and we also have an advantage because we’ve been doing it for so long.” 

Among the list of factors contributing to the success of the company, John listed: keeping a steady eye on their customers’ needs, staying abreast of technology to help connect candidates and employers, and continuing to refine their process. 

“It’s really about continuing to refine and better our business,” John said. 

His team is always asking questions, he said, like: 

“Is there a change we can make to the website to make the company bet¬ter? Is there a new product that we can come up with to help serve our audiences? Is there a change that we should be making to our marketing material to better communicate what it is that we’re offering?” 

“One of the aspects that I love about what I do for a living and what we do as a company is that we are helping people move on in their careers, making their lives better,” John continued. “We’re also helping colleges and universities find the talent that they need to help them fulfill their missions, whether it’s educating their students, advancing research, social benefits, you name it.” 

John’s reasoning for locating in Innovation Park is simple. “It’s quality of¬fice space and it’s a good location that’s easy to get to for our employees.” 

John’s one piece of advice to other entrepreneurs? “If you have a dream that you’re passionate about, I would encourage you to explore that,” John said. “Particularly if you’re at a time in your life when you feel you can pull it off. Sometimes, in life, it gets harder to—as life goes on and you have other commitments. Sometimes those can be hard to do. But even then, you only go through life once. So figuring out what you want to do and pursuing it, that’s what it’s all about.”