Recruiters develop new tactics as US demand for programmers hits full boil
A scarcity of technology talent is one of the biggest challenges to American economic growth right now
Ouliana Trofimenko and Annie Rihn, who work for different technology companies on the West Coast, are both on the front lines of one of the biggest challenges to US economic growth right now: a scarcity of technology talent. Trofimenko, head of technical recruiting at Mapbox, a developer of mapping and navigation software, has 10 people on her team out a total of 339 employees. Rihn, vice-president of recruiting at Zillow in Seattle, has a staff of 100 for about 3,200 workers at the real-estate website operator. Those ratios, about one recruiter for about every 30 employees, compare with about one per 100 at many companies. Both companies treat their recruiting teams as business units because they supply the one thing they can’t be without — software engineers. "A good software engineer in January was deciding between four different offers," Trofimenko says. Mapbox, which is helping build navigation systems for driverless cars, hired 134 employees in 2017 and plans to hire 150 this ...
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