Category: Press

How To Hire When Your Company Is Embroiled In Controversy

Although Gawker Media and Theranos operate in two very different industries, the online publisher and the health-tech startup have a couple of things in common. Both are embroiled in controversy, and both are trying to recruit new employees.

The background, in brief: Theranos is under both criminal and civil investigation, and federal regulators are deciding whether or not to revoke its California lab’s license and ban CEO Elizabeth Holmes from working in the industry for two years. Last week, the company made headlines for voiding two years of test results, prompting many industry experts to question whether the once-lauded unicorn had finally fallen.

Gawker’s posting online of wrestler Hulk Hogan’s sex tape led to a pricey privacy lawsuit. A judge ruled against Gawker and ordered the company to pay $140 million in damages. Behind the scenes, Silicon Valley billionaires Peter Thiel (backing Hogan) and Pierre Omidyar (in Gawker’s corner) are spending millionsduking it out to defend or deny freedom of speech (depending on whom you ask).

As of this writing, both companies are in hiring mode in spite of the scandals. Theranos is advertising open positions in every area of its organization, from corporate (72 jobs including both executive assistant and personal assistant to the CEO) to scientific (48 positions) and others. Gawker’s array encompasses a more modest 14 jobs, 10 of which are in editorial.

But when your company is in the news because of its struggles, how do you convince new hires that it’s a place to build their careers? We asked the experts.

Be honest about where you actually are, the problems that exist, and the media attention amplification.

SPEAK THE TRUTH, SING LOUDLY

Both Gawker and Theranos tout the strength of their place in their respective industries on their career pages. For its part, Theranos also uses phrases like, “Do work that will change the world,” and, “This is how you make history” to entice potential applicants. Gawker frontloads its page with its benefits (paid medical, 401(k)) and perks (weekly catered meals, awesome events, and fun people).

Neither makes mention of the recent crises on their websites. But for the recruiters and hiring managers working with potential candidates, Dave Carvajal, a veteran recruiter, CEO, and founder of Dave Partners, advises, “Embrace the struggle.” The way Carvajal sees it, times of trouble are a great opportunity for leaders to step up and shine. Should they prevail, he says, “Few things are more exciting than stories of the human will to struggle, aspire, work hard, and triumph against great odds.”

Carvajal believes that a company’s leaders should craft and amplify a narrative that addresses the problems. Then, he says, “Let the entire organization sing from the same hymnal and encourage the team to sing loudly.”

He recommends telling recruits the truth. “Be honest about where you actually are, the problems that exist, and the media attention amplification,” he says. Recruiting is about human relationships, Carvajal explains, pointing out that hiring managers shouldn’t be afraid to be vulnerable. “Emotions can be powerful allies in lifting our common humanity,” says Carvajal. “They build trust.”

Via: Fastcompany.com

Forbes: Trendsetters – Dave Carvajal

TIME.COM #ASKTHEEXPERT: How to Make the Most of Two Competing Job Offers

Q: I’ve been actively looking for a new job, and now I have what could be considered a good problem: I’ve gotten offers from two different companies. How do I make the most out of this? The company I’d rather work for is offering a lower salary than my second choice. What’s the best way to get the job I’d rather take to meet or beat that offer?

A: That is a good problem to have! Since you haven’t been hired by either company yet, though, you’re right to be cautious—a misstep could torpedo your chances with one or both employers.

As you’ve already discovered, choosing between jobs can mean weighing two potentially very different salaries. “Multiple offers can also help you negotiate your total compensation package, which can span your base salary, benefits, perks, vacation time, [and] any bonuses you might receive,” said Jessica Jaffe, community expert at jobs site Glassdoor.com.

Not surprisingly, Jaffe encourages job-seekers to use Glassdoor’s platform to compare salaries and read reviews of each company. (Other experts also name-checked Glassdoor as a good resource for people weighing multiple job offers.) Doing your research will give you a better feel for what’s typical in the market: Is the one company offering more than the norm, or is the other coming up a little short?

“Read at least eight to 10 different reviews to really get a feel for the culture, management, and department you might be working for, as well as learn what it might be like to do your job,” Jaffe says.

If your A-list job isn’t offering as much as you’d like, or as much as the competition is willing to pay, you can use that as leverage—but there are certain ways of going about it that are better than others. For starters, candidates should “do the best they can to deal directly with the hiring manager, the person who’s actually managing the budget for their compensation,” advises Dave Carvajal, CEO of tech industry recruitment firm Dave Partners. Keep it friendly, he says, but let the hiring manager know that there’s another offer on the table. “Make it clear that this is the preferred opportunity, but that they’re open to the best opportunity.”

It’s OK—preferable, actually—to be specific about what the competition is offering when you ask a company to match it.

If you hit the wall on a higher salary, try negotiating a signing bonus; companies are sometimes more receptive to a one-time cost than committing to an ongoing expense that’s higher than they planned. You could also ask for other accommodations such as a flexible work schedule, the ability to work remotely at least part of the week, or more vacation time, says Kelly Mattice, vice president at The Execu|Search Group.

Job title is another potential negotiating point, but be careful about asking for an elevated role. “You don’t want to give off the message that you’re focused on ego,” Carvajal says. Since you haven’t been officially hired yet, it’s important to continue emphasizing your commitment to being a team player first and foremost.

If you’re still on the fence about which job to choose, look beyond the pay package. Evaluate which job aligns better with your long-term career trajectory, which one offers growth opportunities such as coaching or continuing education, and which company culture is a better fit for you personally.

“There are better ways to understand the company’s ability to meet your long-term goals without directly asking about opportunities for advancement,” Mattice points out. For instance, ask how the company measures success, or whether and how it encourages mentorship. Ask the hiring manager to identify one of the company’s top producers or most valued employees and explain why their contributions rise to the top. If you get the chance to meet with your potential future colleagues, ask them how they structure their week. The answers will give you a real-life glimpse into the pace and priorities of the culture, which should make your decision much easier.

Via: Time.com

NBC NEWS: THE YEAR THE JOB PERK ARMS RACE REALLY TOOK OFF IN TECHNOLOGY

As Silicon Valley’s wunderkinds outgrow their hoodies, tech companies are seeking new ways to land and retain talent.

Forget the foosball table in the lobby and the beer Kegerator in the community kitchen. The newest crop of perks — paid parental leave, backup day care, student loan repayment assistance — reflect both the more adult preoccupations of today’s workers and the tech industry’s efforts to shed its reputation as a boys’ club.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook recently announced that it was expanding its four months of paid parental leave to include workers outside the U.S. Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

“The market is incredibly hot, particularly for technology people,” said Dave Carvajal, CEO of Dave Partners, a technology executive recruitment firm. “Companies are having triple-digit, year-over-year growth in terms of revenues, and that usually requires them to double in size in terms of people.”

While earlier cycles of technology innovation were driven by hardware and products, today’s startups are more likely to be focused on mobile applications, services or software development. Without the overhead of manufacturing, the bar to entry is much lower and entrepreneurs can raise enough capital to start hiring more quickly.

“The cost of capital has gone down over the last 15 years,” said Mehul Patel, CEO of Hired.com. “It takes less and less money to get a technology company off the ground, so what really becomes important is being able to find talent.”

Vincent Antonelli, a senior consultant at HR consulting firm Towers Watson, said many tech companies have reached parity on salary structure, as well as more run-of-the-mill benefits like health insurance and 401(k) matching. Offering unusual perks helps them stand out.

“The thing I love about perks are that you can use them to target discrete employee segments,” he said.In this case, that usually means millennials, who are reshaping the compensation landscape as both employees and entrepreneurs. To compete, tech companies have seriously upped the ante in the perks arms race, particularly when it comes to parental leave.

For instance, Facebook recently announced that it was expanding its four months of paid parental leave to include workers outside the U.S., shortly after founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg became a first-time father.

Netflix announced unlimited parental leave in August, to go with its unlimited vacation policy. Microsoft more than doubled its paid maternity leave from eight weeks to 20 the same month.

The movement really picked up steam in November: Adobe expanded its parental leave to 26 weeks for new moms, Amazon bumped its up to 20 weeks and music streaming service Spotify announced that its employees could take six months.

“With our expanded policy, we can better support our people across a spectrum of age, gender and experience,” Donna Morris, senior vice president of people and places at Adobe, said via email.

With paid parental leave becoming near ubiquitous, companies are adding sweeteners to the generous paid-time-off policies.

Real estate platform Zillow Group, for instance, announced in November that in addition to 16 weeks of paid maternity leave — an increase from 12 weeks — plus eight weeks paid parental leave for all employees (such as new dads), it is offering a $1,000 “baby bucks” stipend.

“Our employee population is starting and building families,” said Zillow Group COO Amy Bohutinsky, “Many … find themselves making a choice between balance and their career path. The objective (is) having them stay at the company longer and build careers.”

Many tech companies are actively courting women and new mothers in particular, both to acquire skilled workers and to ditch the “fraternity row” culture that has characterized much of the industry.

IBM, for example, said in July that breast-feeding moms on business trips would be able to ship breast milk home for free. Other companies have offered to pay for female employees to have their eggs frozen, or for nannies to accompany working new moms on business trips.

Consulting company Accenture is among those making overtures to moms to be, announcing in March that it would double paid maternity leave to 16 weeks.

“We’ve made a very big commitment to gender equality at Accenture, and in order to do that you have to look at almost every part of your organization (and) think about what it takes to make sure that you can have that,” said Ellyn Shook, chief human resources officer. “You need to make sure that you have the programs and practices in place… for people to be successful.”

Shook said the additional leave, along with a policy keeping consultants — who often travel for extensive stretches to meet with clients — at home for the first year after having a baby will help keep professionals, particularly women, from feeling as if they must choose between their career and having a child.

Accenture also is one of a number of companies that is adding or expanding on a perk known as backup day care or emergency dependent care. The idea is that if a family’s regular babysitter comes down with the flu or a snowstorm shutters the day care but not the office, parents won’t have to burn a vacation day so they can stay home and watch their kid.

Experts caution that workers need to evaluate perks to ensure that they aren’t just gimmicks. For example, while “unlimited vacations” — which just stipulate that employees have to clear taking time off with their supervisors — sound great and have gotten more popular, some say the open-ended policy may make employees in ultra-competitive workplaces feel pressure to take even less time off.

Although experts say the new benefits arms race will eventually benefit workers in other industries, including the blue-collar labor market., for now they are primarily available to white-collar, salaried technology employees.

Bruce Elliott, manager of compensation and benefits at the Society for Human Resource Management, predicts the unemployment rate would have to fall to between 4 and 4.5 percent for the policies to spread dramatically.

“Once we see the job market start to recover a little more robustly… we could start to see these perks bleed down,” he said. “I think it’s a little bit too early right now.”

But some industries that need workers with the same skill sets as tech companies, like financial services and consulting, already are beginning to offer similar perks to compete for top talent.

“AS A COUNTRY, WE SHOULD BE SO EMBARRASSED ABOUT THE LACK OF SUPPORT FOR WORKING PARENTS.”

“We’re actually starting to see this stuff bleed out,” Elliott said. He noted that Credit Suisse bank recently increased paid leave for new parents from 12 to 20 weeks and made nannies available for workers on business trips, while PricewaterhouseCoopers initiated a program to help new hires pay off student loans.

“They’re exploring this new best practices model, and it is starting to get picked up,” agreed Sara Sutton Fell, CEO of FlexJobs.com, adding that she hoped the growing awareness would reach all the way from Silicon Valley to Washington, D.C. “I do hope it trickles into more of the federal guidelines and employment law. As a country, we should be so embarrassed about the lack of support for working parents.”

Adobe’s Morris concurred. “Government mandates for paid leave in America are nearly nonexistent, so it’s up to companies… (to) help ensure employees have the support they need,” she said.

VIA: NBC News

SF BUSINESS TIMES: UNICORNS POACH GOOGLE’S ROSTER AS STOCKS CRASH

San Francisco tech “unicorns” Airbnb and Uber have poached more than 100 Google employees in recent months as the battle for top talent in the Bay intensifies and stocks gyrate wildly, a report in the New York Times said.

Airbnb has poached more than 100 workers from Google alone, the paper said. Unicorns are startups valued at $1 billion or more and there are currently 124 of them worldwide. They are closely held and as such their equity isn’t vulnerable to the volatile swings of the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 1,000 points at the New York open this morning. Google shares (NASDAQ: GOOG) are down 15 percent since mid-July.

In addition, tech companies that have seen their stock prices skid or their valuations slip, like Twitter and Yelp, have also seen their employees leave for younger companies that appear to be on a faster, safer growth trajectory. That trend is likely to intensify after the tech stock implosion, which saw Twitter dip below its IPO price for the first time since going public.

“The things that excite young tech workers are high growth and fast execution,”Dave Carvajal, founder of Dave Partners, a tech recruiting firm, told the New York Times. “It’s not that tough for the new unicorns to swing by these big, older tech companies and pick up busloads of talent.”

San Francisco-based Airbnb has more than doubled its workforce over the last year to around 2,000 employees worldwide, and has focused on hiring talent from Google than can help it build out its business.

Uber has ballooned from only 1,300 workers a year ago to 3,500 now, specifically in its engineering department, where its enhancing its mapping technologies. The Times reported Uber has hired at least a dozen former Googlers for its mapping department alone.

“These people think quite a bit about what our future growth potential is, what kind of impact we will have on the world, and, yes, what that would mean in terms of their equity,” Mike Curtis, vice president for engineering at Airbnb, told the paper.

Via: San Fransisco Business Times

REUTERS: THREE GOLDMAN BANKERS LEAVE FOR UBER AS TECH WORLD RAIDS WALL STREET TALENT

Three mid-level bankers in Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s (GS.N) technology investment banking group in San Francisco have left to take positions at ride service company Uber Technologies Inc in recent months, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The bankers are the latest to leave Wall Street banks for Silicon Valley startups, where the lure of more flexible hours – and in some cases stock options and share grants – can be hard to resist. For tech companies, having bankers on staff can help smooth the path to an initial public offering and other capital raisings.

Uber, currently valued at around $51 billion, said in August that it expected an IPO within 18 to 24 months. It has already raised $7.4 billion from multiple financing rounds, and is the biggest so-called “unicorn” – the term for privately held tech startups worth $1 billion or more – that has yet to go public.

Goldman does not disclose attrition figures, but it has lost enough employees to startups, private equity firms, and other companies in recent years that it announced earlier this month a series of changes designed to help it retain more junior employees at the analyst and associate level, including promoting them faster. It has also set up a task force to help it retain mid-level employees who hold the vice president title.

Spokespeople for Goldman and Uber both declined to comment.The increasing attraction of other fields for Wall Street bankers underscores how increased regulation after the financial crisis has weighed on employees’ potential earnings from careers in the sector.

There is a lack of publicly available data documenting how many people have left the big banks, but there have been a series of high profile exits, including Ruth Porat, former chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley (MS.N), who earlier this year took a similar role at Google parent Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL.O), and Michael Evans, former vice chairman and head of Asia at Goldman, who became president of China e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding (BABA.N) in August.

A vice president in Wall Street investment banking can get paid $500,000, including bonus, while a mid-level corporate development employee at a technology company like Uber might earn closer to $200,000, recruiters said. The banker’s salary will often fluctuate depending on how the deals and capital raising areas are doing in a particular year. Bankers may take pay cuts to move to Silicon Valley, but there is often the appeal of a better work-life balance and the opportunity to work at fast-growing private companies that can offer shares or stock options, and therefore the possibility of big IPO paydays for senior staff. Those gains can sometimes more than make up for the reduced salaries.

HARVARD PIPELINE

Some younger workers who would have been expected to head to Wall Street in the past are avoiding banks altogether. At Harvard Business School, for example, 20 percent of graduating students from the class of 2015 said they were taking jobs at technology companies, up from 11 percent in 2011, according to the school’s employment report.

While 31 percent of students said they were going to work for financial services companies, about three quarters of that group went into venture capital, private equity and leveraged buyout firms. The numbers going into investment banking and sales and trading, the traditional focus of firms like Goldman, halved to 5 percent, from 10 percent in 2011.

Banks may not like losing employees, but they would rather lose them to clients than to competitors, said Noah Schwarz, a senior recruiter at headhunters Korn Ferry. A banker that goes to a client is “viewed as a ‘good leaver,’” Schwarz said.

The three Goldman employees who joined Uber – Ian Kleinfield, Prabir Adarkar, and Chris Lapointe – did not return emails and LinkedIn messages seeking comment.

Uber has hired a number of senior employees from Goldman’s technology investment banking group before, including finance chief Gautam Gupta and corporate development head Cameron Poetzscher.

The ride service company often hires bankers for corporate development. They focus on plotting the company’s strategy and handling financial transactions including capital raising.Some of the bank’s employees would know Uber’s finances well as Goldman helped it to raise $1.6 billion by selling convertible securities to Goldman wealth management clients this year.

Former Goldman employees on the engineering side have also played key roles in creating the formulas that Uber uses to determine how much it should charge for rides at any given time based on demand, recruiters said.

Uber has relationships with a number of other Wall Street banks. They include Morgan Stanley, which was the lead arranger of a $2 billion line of credit for the company, also this year.

BANKERS OR CONSULTANTS

Uber is growing very rapidly, and now has about 5,000 employees, up from only about 550 at the beginning of 2014. The company has expanded to dozens of new cities in the past two years, and now spans 68 countries.

Chelsea Cooper worked at Goldman for four years before leaving the banking world behind during the financial crisis for a career in technology. She was hired at Uber in 2012 as general manager of the company’s United Kingdom operations, where she launched the service. For employees on the business side, “Uber really hired from two pools: from bankers or consultants,” said Cooper, who left Uber in 2013 and is now head of technology at recruiting firm Hired. Goldman ranks in the top 10 companies that Uber recruits from, ahead of even large technology firms like Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), Oracle Corp (ORCL.N) and Intel Corp (INTC.O), according to LinkedIn. Tech companies like Microsoft (MSFT.O) and Facebook (FB.O) are bigger sources for hiring than Goldman.

Other Silicon Valley companies have also been hiring former Goldman employees. The bank is one of the most sought-after for technology companies, who believe that Goldman screens and trains its employees rigorously, recruiters said. “If someone has made it through the Goldman Sachs process, you know they are a high-caliber hire,” said Dave Carvajal, founder and CEO of Dave Partners, a tech recruiting firm.

Goldman’s expertise in technology banking helps too. Its technology team, which is one of the bank’s largest investment banking groups, has advised technology companies on more merger deals than any other bank in the world so far this year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Via: Reuters