Earlier this year, my colleague Claire Cain Miller and I reported on the fierce recruiting wars among tech companies as they competed to hire and retain talented software developers and engineers. We wrote about some of the perks that start-ups were offering to potential employees to convince them to join their companies, including free meals, haircuts and even iPads.
Now, Hipster, a start-up in San Francisco that lets people post queries and answers to others in their geographic area using the Web and a mobile phone, is trying to attract fresh faces to its company with a particularly attention-getting offer — $10,000 and a year’s supply of beer. The company is also offering a bicycle, pair of oversized glasses, skinny jeans, a bowtie, mustache-grooming services and a pair of boots. The prize was designed to resonate with the company’s name. The beer, of course, is PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon, for those who are not hip).
“As you know, recruiting is insanely competitive right now, so we wanted to do something that would break through the noise, and get the attention of the people we’re trying to reach,” said Doug Ludlow, one of the founders of the company.
Mr. Ludlow said the reward would be delivered to anyone hired through the campaign or to anyone who referred someone who was then hired.
Hipster, founded in January, raised $1 million in funding from a long list of prominent investors, including Google Ventures, Lightbank and Mitch Kapor, among others.
In total, the service has around 6,000 users. The company is still testing its service in a few cities — Boulder, Colo., and Austin, Tex. — and is actively looking to hire a crew of engineers to flesh out its ranks.
Mr. Ludlow, who began the hiring campaign on Wednesday, said the company had already received 240 applications. Nearly half were related to marketing and sales, and roughly 40 percent were from developers. But the remaining 10 percent were from the most promising candidates, coming from Hipster’s rivals and companies like Google, Twitter, SalesForce, Oracle and AOL. Those applicants were proof enough that the campaign had been successful so far, he said.
“Getting these 20 people into interviews would have cost hundreds of thousands in recruiter’s fees, and we did it for free,” he said.
