The Hartlepool firm which grew out of a meeting at a trampoline park

Joan Cook of UKSE (front) with members of the expanding team at Phavour. From back: Lliam Casey, Ryan Tuck, Adam Gray, Charlie Eve, Emelia Powell and Jo Elliott.

Lliam Casey, 20, and Charlie Eve, 21, are the bosses of Phavour which has added six more staff to its team with more expected to join before the end of the year.

Phavour helps university students to find part-time employment, freelance work or one-off tasks.

Lliam had the idea during an internship in Asia and Phavour became reality when he met TV and film graduate Charlie in a Hartlepool trampoline park.

Joan Cook of UKSE (centre) with members of the fast-growing team at Phavour. From left: Jo Elliott, Charlie Eve, Ryan Tuck, Lliam Casey, Adam Gray and Emelia Powell.

“We felt that we had the combination of skills to make this a success,” said Lliam. “We were delighted with the early response then everything suddenly turned upside down as lockdown began.

"A lot of students are employed in the hospitality industry or offices and domestic premises which shut down immediately. Working from home ourselves, we had to adapt quickly and concentrated our efforts on linking students into home-working too such as design, marketing or IT.

“It was hard work but it brought results and we now have a team of eight that should number at least 12 by the end of the year.”

The firm is based at the UKSE-run Innovation Centre in Hartlepool.

Lliam added: “UKSE supported us by finding the extra office space we needed and even helped with furniture.”

Phavour matches students to jobs. It saves them time writing numerous applications as they can quickly find the specific tasks that suit them and their study schedules.

Originally, Phavour had tasks in areas including fitness, performance arts, beauty, engineering, social media, TV production, languages and computer science alongside gardening, dog walking, decorating, childminding and cleaning.

Lliam added: “Phavour is really moving job-finding into the digital age, following services such as banking, dating, music and photography.”

Joan Cook of UKSE, the Tata Steel regeneration subsidiary, said: “We have more than 50 businesses based in our Hartlepool Innovation Centre and it has been such a difficult time for them all. Like many others, Lliam and Charlie have worked extremely hard to keep Phavour on track and they deserve every success.”

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The Hartlepool firm which grew out of a meeting at a trampoline park - and now it is creating new jobs

A message from the Editor:

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.