The Daily Muse Expands From A Community For Professional Women To "The Muse," A Career Destination For Everyone

The Daily Muse is rebranding today to serve a wider audience. The company has expanded and is going under the name The Muse now, which includes job listings, company profiles, and a career advice publication under the old name, The Daily Muse. The Daily Muse originally targeted women in their twenties and thirties, but The Muse will now offer content for all professionals.

“As we grew, we began to notice something we didn’t expect: People we didn’t intend to find us, who we didn’t think would need or use our resources, came in droves,” the company wrote in a blog post today. “They were seeking the same thing we were: An answer to the question, “What do you want to do with your life?”

The site, founded by ex-McKinsey analysts Kathryn Minshew, Alexandra Cavoulacos and Melissa McCreery, launched in September 2011. The company was a member of the Winter 2012 Y Combinator class, and launched the visual job search product Company Muse in February 2012.

Minshew tells me that the company heard from men, professionals in their fifties and sixties who were looking to re-enter the workforce or switch careers, military service men and women looking to enter civilian careers, and others who identified with their content and asked them to open things up to a broader group.

Minshew says one reader said he used the site every day for a month or so before realizing that it was targeted at women; he likened the experience to going to the bathroom and realizing there aren’t any urinals there. The team chuckled over the metaphor, but realized that they could reach a broader audience while still sticking to their core mission.

“We still want to empower women to kick ass at their jobs,” the post said. “And we want to empower men, too. We don’t want to—and we won’t—ignore the issues that women still face in the workplace, but we want this to be a broader conversation, and as we continue it, we want to bring everyone to the table.”

“We don’t want to say we’re not for women anymore, because thats still our core demographic,” Minshew explain. “But we also want to acknowledge that the conversation about women in the workplace is more effective when it’s not in a vacuum.”

The company redid the site’s navigation, focusing more on careers and job search, and condensing the peripheral content, on topics like food and travel, into a smaller space on the front page. The editorial staff will be introducing more male voices and more perspectives from professionals over 40.

Minshew tells me the site now has over one million monthly visitors and the staff plans to expand it internationally by the end of the year. She also says the team is growing, and will be at 14 full-time staffers and two interns next month.

via TechCrunch » Startups http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/techcrunch/startups/~3/kkn8J04tldM/