Big tech companies may be preparing to downsize, but startups are still hiring like mad. Particularly engineers.
It’s hard for one startup to get noticed above the crowd, but what if twenty of them pool their resources, hold a competition and throw a five day party for top recruits? That’s the goal of Gnip and 19 other Boulder, Colorado based startups who are pitching in $5,000 each to host a multi-day job fair at the end of October.
Engineers are invited to upload their resumes and apply for 100 spots at the event. The applications will be reviewed by the companies, and a total of 100 people will be invited out for an all-expenses paid three day trip. Twenty applicants are rotated through each day over a five day period, with dinners and parties each night.
I love this idea. And I expect it to be duplicated soon.
Of course, if you aren’t one of the 100 selected attendees, or if Boulder isn’t for you, check out the Crunchboard job board. There are hundreds of startup and tech jobs waiting for you to apply.
I’m in.
Hi! My name is Kathy Alberts and I am the recruiter with Aptana. We are looking to fill a few key roles on our development team, so if you are interested in working for a promising startup in the Bay Area, please visit our careers page at: http://aptana.com/careers. Thanks and hope to hear from you.
this is brilliant!
That sounds like a great job to have at a new startup
Think it’d be wrong to apply just for the free flight and dinners?
Yes, that would be wrong. Funny, but wrong. No drinks for you!
this is a great idea – better yet, why not identify a pool of devs who could be shared among several startups? Might keep the work more interesting for the devs, less burnout; and each project has a wider pool of brain resources to draw on…
> this is a great idea – better yet, why not identify a pool of devs who could be shared among several startups? Might keep the work more interesting for the devs, less burnout; and each project has a wider pool of brain resources to draw on…
Brilliant. And how about we call it… “India”.
Ha ha ha
well, that’s kind of the idea behind an incubator set up. i think that works well for non-engineering staff, like admin and finance, maybe even design, but engineering usually works best with a dedicated team. the more complex a project, the less likely the engineer is going to perform optimally across multiple projects.
BINGO!!!
“Big tech companies may be preparing to downsize, but startups are still hiring like mad.”
And, this is why we build http://www.HotStartupJobs.com
John
Oh that’s funny, I made that yellow banner yesterday in like 5 minutes while giving my friend Ingrid some design feedback and screenshots of how to improve the site. So after 2.5 years of toiling away in the bay area, I finally get techcrunched for something I whipped out super quick on the side – that’s hilarious!
And we thank you for that
No problem, it was my pleasure
yeeehaw, just like back when we were cowboys, eh?
Hey you still are, Ingrid! Homesteading out there in frontierland
I like the idea. There may be some pitfalls however. I wonder if they have worked out the process ahead of time where all of the companies want to hire the same top 10% engineers? Certainly points out the pain in hiring good startup employees.
Tom — we 20 companies are a pretty diverse bunch. There are companies that need front-end Javascript/CSS aces, companies that need LAMP stack experts, companies (like Gnip) that need Java programmers that want to work on scalability problems, and so on and so forth. Hopefully there won’t be too many times where we all love the same person.
(And in those cases, won’t it just rock to be the engineer in question?)
Could be fun, even though it might feel a little like a ‘career day’ flashback.
Just a thought: How long till 20 startups hire and then share a small pile of developers? Kinda seems like even a small bootstrapping company could use some intermittent help getting things off the ground. Why limit the cloud to hardware? All the startups could get access to (or a slice of) the top 10% of the pool.
CG
@CG that’s actually not a bad idea, especially if you consider that some specialized roles are often needed by several startups but not necessarily enough for a full-time hire by any one of them.
For example, I’m a hybrid designer/developer and after working at startups for the last 18 months, I still haven’t found one where I don’t have regular periods of downtime because the developers are busy building out my designs, so I could see working at several gigs at once, switching gears every few days. It’s a lot quicker for me to whip out mocks than it is for the developers to make them real.
I applied!
I’m applied, hopefully I get picked!
Good idea indeed and a very smart way to get attention !!! It will be specially good for subject matter experts who can provide their services with multiple companies.
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It’s a brilliant idea. Makes me wish I was an engineer.
Огромное спасибо
I like michael buble-head’s idea….takes the risk out of starting up a dev consulting house…..you basically come together with other startups, and tell a group of hot developers that you’ll all become their instant client roll.
who wants to move there….none of those 20 companies sound like next facebook or twitter!!!
Not a bad idea. Maybe even expand on that idea and have a Dev+Startup speed dating style thing, mix it up. My startup is looking for devs … and lonely …
3 days of madness!!! good for you
You know they would be able to find people if they would let people work remotely.. As a SQL database designer in Phoenix, AZ I find it very frustrating that every startup I talk to wants me to move to XYZ. I love working for startups but am not willing to uproot and change every couple of years… Don’t get me wrong I have no problem travelling to the office for a week or so every now and then.. But must startups are not willing to work this way.
Hi:
This is great. I am a Sr. Technical Recruiter with 15+ years of experioence in IT as Network Engineer and 6 years as Sr. Technical Recruiter. Right now I am looking for Director of Data Services/Sr. Database developer/Messaging Engineer and VP of Engineering at my company. Please contact me at 310-571-3144 Ex: 167
Kash Adhvaryu
Master CNE, MCSE, CCNP, CIE
Sr. Technical Recruiter
reunion.com
310-571-3144 x 167
I like this idea. Engineering talent is scarce in the SF Bay area too-
Fuser is excited to be one of the 20 companies participating! We’re looking for an all-star ASP.NET/C# or Java developer. Maybe two.
Ah! Startup Lunch is pretty similar to this concept and is already famous in India. Almost 5 cities have already had 2-3 editions each.
Startup Lunch is all about Speed dating between the startup and the candidate.
All the best for the job interviews, kindly prepare well for the interviews and here are some good resources on interview questions
Very Good !
Thanks …
This post very Helped me