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Company Spotlight: Pearl.com

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Sara Mooradian

Providing Answers and Improving Lives

f3c6eef5b07031f5c0417d99384c85bcPearl.com‘s goal is to improve and change people’s lives.  An altruistic goal for sure, but one that its employees take to heart.  As an online professional services platform, Pearl.com connects people with hundreds of experts to over 100 different categories to answer questions from anything about antiques pricing, car advice, even medical opinions.   We spoke with Pearl.com’s Senior Technical Recruiter, Maria Engle about the company’s current hiring focus and their recent success in finding candidates on Readyforce, candidates like Hannah Gordon.

Six months ago, the company relaunched from JustAnswer.com and has since doubled in size.  Today, teams at their Presidio headquarters in San Francisco continue to work excitedly on the rebranding efforts and also on expanding the platform.  When looking for candidates to help grow the engineering team, Maria says they are ideally looking for students that know both Java or C++ and that can be creative.  (Click here to jump  to Pearl.com job descriptions.) Candidates that demonstrate they are open to learning, are creative and critical thinkers and can speak up with suggestions at the regular “scrum meetings,” candidates like Hannah.

Pearl.com’s New Hire: Meet Hannah

Hannah Gordon is one of Readyforce’s early student users.  After graduating in 2011, Hannah focused her job search in West Virginia and had used local career sourcing tools.  But it was the idea of “going West” that called to Hannah and motivated her to login once again to our platform.  She had remembered: “Readyforce had a bunch of startups from California.”

Serendipity then took over.

Hannah updated her profile and connected almost immediately with several companies on Readyforce, including Pearl.com.  With a vacation and networking trip already planned, Hannah made arrangements to interview with Pearl.com on her trip to San Francisco.  She accepted the position as a Customer Care Agent three days later.

Pearl_Hannah_Gordon

Hannah Gordon and Pearl.com teammate Penelope Rivas

Best Part About Pearl.com

When asked about the best part of her new job, Hannah immediately answered that it’s the people and the culture as well as the ability to positively impact people’s lives.  Within the first few days of her new job, Hannah connected with a customer that was looking for advice after her dog had been hit by a car.   Their conversation and Hannah’s subsequent follow up led the customer to realize she could use the company’s platform for even more reasons that she’d originally needed including legal advice and her own medical questions. The customer was so satisfied that she reached out with a personal thank you for the service and for Hannah’s personal touch.  Knowing that they have profoundly helped someone was a great feeling for both Hannah and the team.

Life at Pearl.com

More than 100 Pearl.com employees now work on one of four floors of the restored building in the Presidio.   On each floor, with their front row view of the Golden Gate Bridge, cross-functional “pods” of six to eight team members work together on the company’s weekly releases and overall goals and testing.  It’s common practice for front end engineers to sit with designers, analysts and maybe a copywriter.

At the office, the team also enjoys some fun perks and surprises that CEO Andy Kurtzig likes to spontaneously arrange.  For example, as an avid University of California, Berkeley fan and alum, work was disrupted one day when the Cal marching band and cheerleaders arrived in the halls. (Tip: If you go to an interview at Pearl.com do not wear cardinal red.)  This event registers up there with the time that Andy arranged for bagpipe players on St. Patrick’s day.  Clearly the team likes to have fun.  Oh, and to eat.   The team is also regularly treated to catered lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Most recently, Andy organized a fire truck pizza party in their parking lot – ‘just because’.

 

Looking Ahead

As Pearl.com is focused on its growth one thing remains at the center of everything they do: that they continue to help people.  With that as their motto and goal we hope to support their goal by connecting them with awesome students.  Click here to connect with Maria and learn more about the opportunities available at Pearl.com.

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Need Help Choosing A Career? Data to the Rescue

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Sara Mooradian

Need Help Choosing A Career?

Not sure which career to choose? Sometimes numbers can help. Now you can play around with this fun and interactive infographic from Rasmussen College that uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor and their  Occupational Employment Statistics (salary data) and Occupational Outlook Handbook (career information and outlook) released in April, 2013.

Want to know which companies are hiring for these careers? Scroll down or click here…

Here’s a screenshot of the infographic:

choosing_a_career_rasmussen_infographic

Click on the image to jump to the infographic.

In terms of earning potential, doctors and medical professionals are still at the top – but if you filter the data with the category of Computer and Mathematical Occupations you get to see some pretty fun stuff:

Computer and Mathematical Occupations

Computer and Information Research Scientists 

Median Salary $101,080
Projected expected growth by 2020 for this occupation:  18.7%

Workers in this field conduct research on fundamental computer and information science as theorists, designers, or inventors. They find solutions to computer hardware and software issues, and work with management, vendors, and technicians to determine computing needs.

Software Developers, Systems Software 

Median Salary: $96,600
Projected expected growth by 2020 for this occupation: 32.4%

Software developers are the creative minds behind computer programs. They develop many different applications and underlying systems control networks. They also modify existing software to correct errors and adapt new hardware to improve performance.

Software Developers, Applications

Median Salary: $89,280
Projected expected growth by 2020 for this occupation: 27.6%

Working with the latest technology software, developers develop, create, and modify general computer applications, software, or specialized utility programs. They design or customize software for client use with the aim of optimizing operational efficiency.

Which Companies Are Hiring For These Careers?

Here are some of the companies on Readyforce that are looking to connect with students interested in these types of  careers.


 

Click on their logo to connect with them today or click HERE to explore the full list!

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Company Spotlight: Axcient

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Sara Mooradian

axcient logoSilly string, nerf guns, scooters, and master chefs?  Yes, all those are part of the daily fun for recent college grads and interns that work at Axcient, the cloud services platform.  That and of course all the serious stuff that comes with working alongside a mentor and collaborating on one of their exciting engineering teams.

 

Axcient Team

Axcient, which was named one of the 10 best places to work in the SF Bay area, is hiring smart college grads and interns for their engineering teams.  But please note: brains alone won’t land you a job.  While things may be moving quickly over at their Mountain View headquarters as the company shifts from startup to growth (the company raised another $20 million in Series D funding last January),  their primary focus when sourcing new talent is still finding people that will be a good fit for their company’s culture.

So what does the ideal candidate look like? And what (if they’re hired) can they expect to work on?

axcient Engineering candidates applying to Axcient should be focused on team first, be result orientated and demonstrate a passion for coding.  Also? They like to have fun.  There are the occasional silly string wars and scooter races that pop up – and applicants should be cool with that.  One more thing, you should probably enjoy food.  The Axcient team boasts their own ‘master chefs’ who will host an impressive backyard barbeque once the weather permits, which being in California is almost always.  Back to the candidate’s profile… A strict technical background is not required but the ability to demonstrate both perseverance and passion with respect to coding challenges are.  Bottom line: are you a fun-coding-challenge loving person?  Good.

Once hired, Axcient’s interns and new hires join an engineering team that works on either web development, UI/UX, networking or core storage.  Most recently, the company released a complete redesign of their user experience to great reviews.  Looking ahead, the teams will be focused on virtualization, strong cloud computing, SaaS model, and big data issues.  New hires can expect to jump right in (with the backup and guidance of their onsite mentors) and contribute in a big way to Axcient’s product.  At this cloud computing company there are no legacy systems and everything is written from scratch.  Every contribution whether written by intern or senior developer will end up by used by the consumer.  A key fact that will continue to draw talent to this growing company.

So are you a change the world kind of person? Someone that is still interested in personal growth and collaboration?  Connect with Axcient on Readyforce today!

Check out this fun video from their office’s Halloween shenanigans.  The “Office Space” tribute with their CEO Justin Moore is definitely my favorite part!

 

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Who Will Win ‘Best Commencement Speech of 2013′?

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Sara Mooradian

Over the weekend, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo did a great job in kicking off the race for the best commencement speech of 2013.  While delivering his 15 minute address to University of Michigan graduates, @DickC drew on his experience as a stand up improv comedian and kept everyone both entertained and inspired with his message to “be in this moment.” He also managed to shamelessly live plug the company that pays his salary, Twitter by sending out the following:

It’s quickly gaining popularity and will likely become one of the most viral commencement speeches joining Steve Jobs’s 2005 speech at Stanford and Conan O’Brien ‘s 2011 Dartmouth speech.

So that begs the question… Who will give the next great speech?  There are a lot of heavy hitters lined up across college campuses in the next few weeks.  Here’s a quick summary of who’s speaking and where.

The Geeks

Drew Houston Dropbox best commencement speech of 2013

Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox will deliver the commencement address at MIT’s 2013 ceremony.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak will be headlining University of California, Berkeley’s address on May, 18, 2013.  Nate Silver, the world’s most famous statistician will speak at Ripon College in Wisconson and  Drew Houston, co-founder and CEO of Dropbox will take the stage at MIT’s ceremony on June 7, 2013.

The Comics

Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s own Dan Rather will be hosting speaking at University of Virginia’s ceremony on May 18, 2013. And technically, you could put Dick Costolo in this category as well, although he probably belongs with the geeks.

The Politicians

POTUS (aka President Barack Obama) will speak at not one, but three commencements this season.   He spoke at Ohio State on May 5th and will speak at Morehouse and the US Naval Academy in the coming weeks.  On the other hand, Vice President Joe Biden will only speak at one, the University of Pennsylvania’s podium on May 13th.

President Bill Clinton will also be on the circuit and will speak at Howard University’s commencement ceremonies on May 11, 2013.

 

The Mayors

The next two could have been lumped in under politicians but it’s more fun to give them their own category. It will be the battle of the mayors with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaking at Stanford on June 6th and Newark Mayor Corey Booker at Yale on May 19th.

The Spiritual

And in two of this season’s best ‘gets’, Tulane will be hosting his Holiness the Dalai Lama on May 18th and Harvard scored Oprah Winfrey as it’s keynote on May 30th.

 

If you missed Dick Costolo’s speech, here it is in its entirety.  He has set the bar pretty high for the 2013 commencement speech class. Here’s hoping there are some more good ones:

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