Dive Brief:
- Seattle-area startups are at a disadvantage on the salary front when competing with giants including Amazon and Microsoft.
- Washington state is the largest importer of computer science talent in the country to feed the booming tech industry, and the number of people coming in still isn’t enough.
- The state has 25,000 jobs in the tech industry that have been unfilled for at least six months, according to the Washington Roundtable.
Dive Insight:
The Upstart Business Journal recently explored how small startups, including one named Liquid Planner, must promote other benefits other than salary, such as culture and impact, to land quality candidates. In the past year, Liquid Planner has grown from 60 to 100 employees using such creative recruiting strategies. Also, startups face the challenges of larger companies swallowing up smaller ones just for the engineering talent, rather than the company's product.
"At large companies, you’ll make more money but work on a smaller piece of the business and there are less opportunities to diversify your skill set,” Pearce said.
GIlead Berenstain, founder of Seattle travel planning startup Utrip, said it’s about getting candidates excited about the possibility of the company, as well as the cool technology.
“You have to find candidates who are looking to maximize things in their careers other than short-term cash to compete against the Amazons of the world,” Berenstein said.
