Why our mission matters

Conceptualized as our co-founder's capstone entrepreneurship project at the University of Victoria, Riipen addressed an issue that they faced personally as students — the challenge of gaining relevant work experience, building a network of possible employers, and then demonstrating their skills to that network in order to find work that would help them start their careers. They were facing the graduation conundrum. 

You can’t get a job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. 

Since inception in 2013, Riipen has expanded its reach internationally and has developed a state of the art technology platform that caters and provides significant competitive advantages for organizations and academic institutions while staying true to their original goal of supporting student development. Riipen has enabled 100,000+ students at 400+ post-secondary institutions to partake in applied learning with 17,000+ companies.

All of this leads us to our mission:  Eliminate Underemployment 


The Riipen Values

The Riipen values mean everything to us. They guide our how so we can fulfill our why.

Empowerment | Inclusivity | Ingenuity | Purpose | Learning | Community

With these values in mind, it is important that we acknowledge that Riipen's headquarters are located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples–Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. 

We acknowledge this as a reminder to ourselves and others to respect the land that we are on and to nurture our sacred relationship to this land as well as to its First Peoples both past and present.

Perks and Benefits

Remote First:
At Riipen we consider ourselves a “remote first” organization, this means that our team members are not required to work from an office and are free to choose the working environment that works best for them. 

The majority of our team members work remotely from their home office in Canada and we have a quarterly WFH stipend to make sure that you can be set up to do your best work!

Wellness:
We take your health seriously. At Riipen, we have a customizable company-wide benefits plan including extended health and dental with no waiting period. You are eligible for benefits from day 1.

Vacation:
We work hard, but we play hard too. Riipen offers 4 weeks of vacation to every new Riipeneer!

Paid Parental Leave:
Being a new parent is hard enough without having to worry about your income. Riipen offers all new parents two weeks of fully paid leave as they begin their journey and 12 weeks of top-up pay so they can forget about work and focus on their new family.

Competitive Salary:
Money talks! We stand behind our compensation philosophy with transparent salary bands built to market. Get paid well and be a part of a growing startup with the opportunity to make it big!

Team:
Work with a team that is supportive, transparent, and friendly. We celebrate the little wins and the big ones together through our robust culture.

DE&I at Riipen

With one of our core values being Inclusivity we feel very strongly about Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.

We are proudly over 50% female identifying (with 53% of our senior leaders identifying as female) and as of September 2022, 39% of Riipeneers identify as BIPOC through optional surveying. 

As part of our fight for pay equity we have implemented a number of fair pay practices, which include
  • Company wide salary reviews annually; reviewing all of our teams salaries at the same time allows us to adjust salaries fairly across the board, reducing the likelihood of unfair pay gaps
  • No one-off merit based increases during the year (if you are promoted at Riipen during the course of the year, you will of course be compensated as such!); those who are better negotiators or better self-advocators are a large contributing factor to the pay gap, we are committed to considering our Riipeneers equally 
  • Twice annual salary audits to specifically consider any pay inequity
  • Transparent, company-wide salary bands to commit to paying fair market salaries for all roles as well as promoting pay equity across Riipen
We are proud to be a Rainbow Registered organization through Canada’s LGBT+ Chamber of Commerce.

We are also proud to have pledged our commitment to the Canadian 50-30 Challenge committing to 50% gender parity and minimum 30% representation of under represented groups in Senior Leadership Roles. 

We have also taken the #PayUpForProgress Pledge committed to actively fighting the pay gap and promoting pay parity. 

This work is far from over and as a collective, we have a long way to go, but Riipen is proud to be playing a part in this pivotal social change.

Current Opportunities

“Riipen has an incredibly supportive culture. When someone tells you that you can reach out to them at any time, they actually mean it”