Recruiting Tip from @dandharris, Dan Harris (Photo credit: Dice.com)

Finding and hiring a chief technology officer is a difficult task for tech companies. A good CTO is essential for startups—which depend on them to take their fledgling companies to the next–and profitable level. But in NY, startups have to compete with hedge funds, banks, not to mention Google, Microsoft and Facebook. Crain’s New York Business reports that CTOs at large firms make salaries of $225,000. But at a startup, they make significantly less. That means startup founders have to invest a lot of time and energy in recruiting. Patrick Ambron of BrandYourself.com told Crain’s the key to wooing worthy talent is get them excited about the challenges they’ll face.

Crain’s New York Business

Scott Heiferman (Photo credit: Esthr)

Brandon Kessler, founder of NY-based startup ChallengePost, is hiring software developers and other employees through a site hosted by Meetup. Made in New York City was created by Scott Heiferman, NY Tech Meetup’s co-founder. Kessler said that the site has allowed him to bypass recruiters in a very competitive market. “It’s huge,” he told Crain’s New York Business.

It makes looking for a job a lot easier for employees too. Ilya Katz applied to ChallengePost in May and started working there a month later. “I might have found this company otherwise, but the website certainly made it a lot easier,” he told Crain’s.

Crain’s New York Business

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JIBE, a NY-based startup, has created a niche for itself as a mobile recruiting solution. According to Business Insider, JIBE signed on with Walmart eight weeks ago, which has 3,800 job openings and has 1/3 of its job board traffic from mobile devices. Before JIBE, Walmart didn’t have a way to help these people have an easy way to apply via mobile device. Joe Essenfeld, JIBE founder, said, “Most big companies have already built mobile apps and sites. But recruiting is a totally different function.” Visiting Walmart’s site on mobile redirects the user to JIBE. Resumes can be uploaded via Google Docs, LinkedIn, email, or Dropbox. Additionally, GPS tracking notifies users of nearby job opportunities.

A majority of the deals JIBE’s sales people sign are six-figures. Essenfeld noted that 250,000 people a month visit the mobile career sites that it hosts. He expects the visitors will reach 2,000,00 once more big-name clients are part of JIBE’s service. Last year, JIBE raised $6 million in Series A funding and a Series B fund is currently in the works. When JIBE first launched it was a web-based feature that helped applicants create better connections with HR managers, however the company soon realized there was a larger mobile opportunity available. Essenfeld said, “We built this product in 2009 without knowing it,” Essenfeld added. “It was totally by accident.”

Business Insider

English: Wall Street sign on Wall Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wall Street is in search of younger, skilled  traders, which has driven up the compensation for these positions. According to the NY Post, the annual salaries for “black-box quantitative analysts starts at $1 million,” while most quantitative analysts start at a base of $200,000. However, there is an extreme shortage of supply for these positions. Recently, the financial sector in NY has cut thousands of jobs, and are looking to slim down with making replacements with math/IT students from ivy league schools.

Kyle Ramkissoon, a top head headhunter and principal at IJC Partners in New York, said, “We have seen many banks cut where they need to cut, and there is more bloodletting to go. At the same time, banks that are cutting staff are also hiring new groups.” Ramkissooon’s office has openings in a multiple of positions that he can’t even fill 20% of.

NY Post

Downtown New York (Photo credit: sreevishnu)

NY ranks third in cities that are attracting tech talent. Wall Street and Silicon Alley both clamor for new grads with degrees in computer science.  Banks and trading firms pay programmers big bucks to design and maintain proprietary trading software. But more and more grads are attracted to the tech scene, turning away from Wall Street to work at hip startups.

New York Post

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When Google moved to NY it brought both dollars and tech talent. But a new decision by Google’s CMO Lorraine Twohill might reverse that trend. Sources say that Twohill thinks the company would be more flexible if their marketing personnel were located in their California offices and not NY.  This might be great for Google, but a potential loss to startups looking to hire experienced people.

SAI Business Insider

Columbia University (Photo credit: InSapphoWeTrust)

Instead of training people and trying to fit them into jobs, Workforce Opportunity Services does it the other way around. The Harlem-based nonprofit sponsors college-level IT training for disadvantaged students. They ask employers what they are looking for and find them in their talent pool.

WOS was founded in 2005 by Arthur Langer of Columbia University. The training takes places at Columbia’s School of Engineering as well as Penn State and Rutgers. Most of the students attend classes at night and work full-time during the day.  The school pays for tuition, textbooks and other expenses with funds from employers. Because students work as independent contractors, companies still save money. WOS’ clients include Avon, HBO, Prudential and the Museum of Modern Art.

Crain’s

Ajay Gupte, president of Linwood-based CLCD LLC, which makes children’s literature databases, told MENAFN.com that, “We see a lot of students coming out of local colleges, but the things they are trained in are not up to par with the technology needs of a small company like ours. We would have to train them and bring them up to speed just so they could work for us, but the cost to do that is difficult for us to bear.” However, Maxine Ballen, founder and CEO of the technology council argued otherwise. She claims that the issue is a lack of communication between the tech companies and higher education institutions.

Data released by the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development in December suggested that NJ’s tech cluster accounted for 313,000 jobs, about 10% of the state’s workforce. However, these numbers are 9% lower than they were in 2007, when tech jobs peaked at 345,108. The average annual salary in this cluster was more than $100,000 in 2010.

MENAFN.com

New York City Color (Photo credit: Randy Le’Moine Photography)

According to the NY Daily News, owners of small to medium sized companies are complaining about the ever growing talent gap in the tech field. Juan Pable Buritica, 28-year-old engineer, accepted a position at NY-based tech startup Onswipe in February, but still receives about three job solicitations a week. The starting salaries average at about $130,000, and go up from there. However, this type of opportunity is not common in NY’s current economy. The NY unemployment rate hit 10% in June, the highest since the bottom of the recession three years ago.

Google and Facebook, major companies in the NY area, are sweeping up job candidates, which is forcing smaller companies to hike up their salaries and perks. There are also strict immigration laws that limit global hiring opportunities.  Gabriel Shaoolian, CEO of Blue Fountain Media, told the NY Daily News that, “I get so frustrated. I hear people say the job market is bad. I say, ‘Really? I have the opposite problem.’” The city’s tech sector employment is up 30% since 2005, according to the NYCEDC.

The engineers most in demand are those who specialize in mobile technology. Starting salaries for most web designers are about $65,000, even those without college degrees. More advanced techies can reign in about $100,000.

NY Daily News

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LinkedIn will be expanding its space at the Empire State Building by 33% from its existing 32,000 sq feet on the 25th floor to include an additional 10,400 sq foot on the 24th floor. The new space is expected to be occupied by 2013. Anthony Malkin, the president of Malkin Holdings, which supervises the property, told Real Estate Weekly that, “LinkedIn has told us that they are expanding because the Empire State Building has proven to be very popular amongst its growing worker population. The World’s Most Famous Office Building proves its value as a well-managed, upgraded, energy efficient, well-located campus environment.”

LinkedIn has about 2,447 employees worldwide, but was founded and is currently headquartered in Mountain View, California. The company operates the largest professional network online, with 161 million members worldwide in about 200 nations and territories. The company’s expansion inside the Empire State building has garnered attention from other tech and new media firms, who plan on moving north from the Chelsea and Flatiron districts.

Real Estate Weekly

DoubleVerify

DoubleVerify is closing the Israeli branch in order to consolidate its multiple teams in a single location. The sales staff is based in NY and the company wants the R&D staff to join them. The company also has offices on the West Coast and in London.

Globes

Virtual-patient training technology at the Mitchells Plain lab (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A survey by the NJ Technology Council concluded that tech companies in NJ are struggling to find applicants with needed qualifications for many positions. According to NorthJersey.com, The council represents more than 1,000 tech companies around the state, and the survey they published concluded that the biggest employment-related obstacle (22%) is lack of company resources for IT and tech training. Next, coming in at 20%, was finding qualified talent, and 6% said tech grads lack skills needed for on the job training.

George Nikanorov, head of marketing for Data Inc. in Montvale, stated that his company normally uses a recruitment team and a database to find employees with one or two years of experience, instead of hiring recent grads. Data Inc. has 600 to 800 employees worldwide,  and works mostly with financial services firms, which requires a lot of technical experience. Nikanorov says that developers of all kinds are in highest demand for them.

NorthJersey.com

English: Looking south from Top of the Rock, New York City (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NY continues to rise in the charts in terms of IT in the United States. According to Techi, NY is bested only by Boston in terms of this ranking, while Silicon Valley still remains the main IT hub. Big companies, such as Google, have gained more and more interest in opening an office in NYC. The city has also managed to increase tech related jobs by 28.7%, and has formed 486 digital startups since 2007, in spite of the recession.

Venture Capitalism in NY has also seen a 32% increase, while the rest of the U.S. and other industries have seen a decline. This increase in the fashion, finance, and media industries may be due to an upswing in social media marketing. Jobs in IT have increased eight times faster than jobs in the private sector in NYC.

Techi

Columbia University School of Journalism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With traditional jobs still scarce, many recent journalism-school graduates are eschewing conventional career paths and choosing to launch their own digital startups instead. Many find their companies becoming lucrative, and such entrepreneurs credit at least some of their success so far to being located in NY, with its thriving digital scene.

Though some of these journalists turned entrepreneurs had previous startup experience from companies they began during college, many stumbled onto the startup scene almost by accident. However, as Crains New York Business points out, new technological advances, as well as the business connections so readily available in NY, have lowered the barriers to entering and succeeding in the digital startup arena.

Crains New York Business

Empire State Building as seen from Top of the Rock (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

technology training centers throughout the city that can help with a lack of tech skills and may even help prepare you for a job. Some of the training centers include:

• MOUSE Squad (50 W 53rd Street, Manhattan)- MOUSE is a non-profit that was founded in NY in 1997 to help wire schools. The program now improves tech skills of students in over 350 schools across the country by integrating technology into the curriculum. Students who participate receive MOUSE certification, and work with professionals in the field.
• NPower, Technology Service Corps (4 MetroTech Center, Brooklyn & 240 E 123rd St, Harlem)-  This non-profit provides young adults in NY free IT education, professional skills, and job placement. The program is 22 weeks, and the last five weeks are dedicated to an internship in the tech field. Students that complete the program receive A+ Certification and can either choose to go onto a higher program or be placed at an entry-level job position.
• School of Cooperative Technical Education (321 E 96th St, Manhattan)- This particular school is a part of the NYC DOE, and is best suited for 16-20 year olds, or those above 21 that do not have a high school diploma or GED. There are two, free IT related programs, Cisco Network Academy/IT Essentials and STRATA/A+ Computer Repair. Students can also receive help from the “School to Work” office in building their resume and working on interviewing techniques.

MetroFocus

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Newly hired chief content officer of NJ.com (the website of several NJ papers including The Star-Ledger) Lamar Graham caused quite a stir among journalists last week by posting what he thought was a private message on Facebook announcing: “I’M HIRING! NJ.COM – New Jersey’s biggest digital news operation – is expanding.” Mr. Graham told the New York Times that the Facebook post was intended for his friends only, many of whom are journalists he worked with at Everyday Health and in a previous stint at Advance Publications.

Mr. Graham said in a later interview with Media Decoder, the site is only expanding its reporting capacity in parts of NJ where parent company Advance does not have a presence.

Media Decoder (NYTimes.com)

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Startups are competing for a limited talent pool of engineers, as according to Crain’s New York Business, it is becoming more and more important to be able to attract and hire talent. NY tech startups are relying on both outsourcing and recruitment teams in their search for engineers. For example, Manhattan-based tech startup, Conductor Inc. hired four engineers in five months over the last year, and is still on the lookout for ten more.

However, startups are losing these job candidates to larger companies like Google, Facebook, and Foursquare, to name a few. Chris Valberg, CEO of Invision, a software prototype developer, tried to hire a developer who proceeded to take a job at Amazon. Valberg told Crain’s NY that, “No way I’m going to be able to compete. Our company has a runway. Their company has an airport.” An additional complication for hiring lies in the act that specialized talent is required for each company and type of startup.

Crain’s NY has offered some advice to reader’s and startup owners on how to combat this issue. Conductor hosts networking events at its office and built its own three-person internal recruiting team. 3D printing company Shapeways keeps track of which large companies hire which kinds of engineers, and goes through job posting sites. Once Josh Levine, CEO of Shapeways, finds the right candidate he makes sure to promise them freedom in creativity and innovation.

On the other hand, Invision set out to hire experienced engineers who had families and homes of their own, offering stock options, gym memberships, a free Mac, and the option to work from home. Another Manhattan-based firm Enterpoid, has half of their 65 person staff working from Hong Kong.

Crain’s New York Business

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Companies have begun to emerge that offer startups options for outsourcing. According to Crain’s NY Business, the Long Island-based website building company called Clevertech.biz uses employees based in NY, the Midwest, Europe, and the Far East. Companies like Cliff Sirlin’s Project Decor use engineers from Clevertech to build their websites. Project Decor uses nine engineers from the company, who interact daily with the Project Decor CTO based in Manhattan.

Sirlin, one of the company’s three co-founders, told Crain’s that, “It’s been the most cost-effective way to get done what we needed to get done. If we had had to hire nine full-time people, the amount of time it would have taken to recruit them never could have allowed us to get as far as we have.”

NY’s Kayweb Angels offers a similar outsourcing solution, but it takes a 15% to 40% equity stake in startups in exchange for engineers and designers, provided from its sister company Kayweb in Manila. Last year alone, the outsourcing company had 200 offers from startups, with 90% from NY. Three of the investments they have made so far have been in NY, but the startups eventually have to bring their development in house.

Crain’s NY Business

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Facebook‘s NY engineering boss Serkan Piantino has cited the ity  as a more diverse tech hub than Silicon Valley. He told Wired that, “The reason people don’t want to be in Silicon Valley is because while it’s awesome for the tech community, [and] is so deep in terms of people thinking about technology, that’s all there is, right? You don’t have the fashion industry, or the media industry, or even finance. Those things make it so you get this variety of experience in New York that’s kind of lacking in Silicon Valley.”

However, Piantino also mentioned the immense talent in NY in terms of professional systems software engineers. These engineers are known for their ability to make systems run reliably and smoothly for a large number of users. Piantino has just begun to fill his office in NY with staff, who are under pressure to make sure Facebook preserves a good image following its going public. Facebook has recently voiced a fear that as the company and its users continue to grow, issues may arise. As reported by Wired, a paranoia exists at the company surrounding falling out of touch with trends or being overshadowed by the next big company.

The NY Facebook office is located on Madison Avenue and opened its engineering wing in January. Though Facebook has not cited an exact number of engineers it plans on hiring, the Seattle office went from three employees to more than 90 in about 18 months. Also, it had recently been reported that Facebook is considering expanding from its 40,000 sq ft Madison Ave. office to a 100,000 sq ft office in The New York Times building. Facebook boasts that it can offer a more glamorous life for engineers than the “behind the scenes” work they do on Wall Street, all while trying to lure engineers with the guarantee that their work will be used by millions of people.

Wired

Return Path

Blumberg left MovieFone in 1999 after being bought by AOL, and set out to create a lasting company. Blumberg wanted to create an environment that made employees want to work for the company, and he did. Blumberg offered six-week sabbaticals for workers with at least seven years experience, extra paid time for employees to do community service work, and unlimited vacation days for hard-working staffers. These perks have helped Return Path grow to 342 employees with $60 million projected revenue for 2012, as reported by Crain’s.

Laura Atkins, partner with Word to the Wise, a competitor of Return Path, told Crain’s, ““Return Path is brain-draining the entire industry, hiring a good mix of highly technical and marketing folks. The company has demonstrated over the years that it’s responsible and not out to monopolize the market, thanks, in many respects, to its leadership—and that’s Matt.”

Today, Return Path works with customers like EBay, and chases down clients like Twitter and Groupon, both of which have complex email databases in need of security.

Crain’s New York Business

Credit: Lloyd Trufelman

A panel including Foursquare‘s Henry Heyman, spoke about engineers in the city and the potential allure of the finance industry yesterday at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC conference.  According to BetaBeat, the sought after engineers could be courted by the larger checkbook and “glam” offered by the finance sector.  The panelists weighed in.

Heyman said, “the kind of engineer that we really want to attract isn’t going to be interested in [money] in the first place.”  He feels that, for his company, the ideal candidate cares about the product and that there is a distinct kind of employee that gravitates towards the finance industry.

Heyman also believes that city-sponsored initiatives, like the new CornellNYC campus, will help local recruiting efforts for Foursquare.  While on the recruiting trail, Heyman offered two location-based choices for graduates: San Francisco or NY.  A significant portion chose the Big Apple as there is an abundance of activities.  “Being in New York has actually been a recruiting tool, and I expect that to only increase moving forward.”

BetaBeat

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Demand for engineers in NY is the number one concern facing the growing number of startup tech companies in the city.  According to WNYC.org, the need for these coveted code-writers was apparent at  New York Tech Day job fair this past April.

Jesse Chad-Norris, co-founder of NY-based Indaba Music and engineer in the 90s, said to WNYC, “we’re definitely seeing a boom right now.”

Tom Lehman, founder of  hip hop crowdsourced lyrics site Rap Genius, adds, “you’re not just facing competition from other companies. If you’re a smart person, chances are you can get funding for your own company. The same force which is creating such a demand for engineers as employees is also creating demand for engineers to be their own boss and start their own companies.”

Despite the disparity in the quantity of engineers, tech companies still have high standards.  As an example, since April, Tumblr requires code testing for its potential engineers.

WNYC.org

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg opening the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to a study from Boston Consulting Group, NY’s ‘s film and TV industry is flourishing. 2011 brought in $7.1 billion from the 275,000 employees in the city’s entertainment sector, making it second place in growth only to Hollywood.

Despite the national trend of job loss, the entertainment industry has seen a growth in 30,000 jobs since 2004.

Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement that this growth is due to the city’s recent efforts to promoting technological innovation and improving the sector’s infrastructure.

AM New York

Goldman Sachs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Goldman Sachs is looking to hire a social media community manager, according to Crain’s New York Business.  The ideal candidate would establish a positive presence on the web and integrate the bank’s brand message to the online community.

It seems that whomever gets the position might have to start from scratch, as Goldman’s Twitter account has 3,600 followers but not one tweet has been posted.  The firm hopes that the new hire will help increase its Web presence and nurture better relations with the social media audience.

Crain’s New York Business

Evan Walther, CEO and co-founder of Pearescope said to Metro Focus that, “people might be the biggest problem. It’s incredibly hard to find staff, and a team you can count on,”  though both the city and the market itself are working to remedy this issue.  Tech entrepreneurs are in need of advice and mentoring, as Joel Natividad, CEO and co-founder of NYCFacets said, “the most important thing for us is getting advice from veterans. You need frank advice from alums.”

Metro Focus

Post-9/11 7 World Trade Center (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today at  1:00 pm, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and AT&T’s  NY president Marissa Shorenstein, will be “rebuilding NYC from the World Trade Center” at the 3rd annual NYC Startup Job Fair at 7 World Trade Center, 10th Floor.  According to information received by NY Convergence,  the fair is designed to connect recent grads/students with nearly 70 NY-based startups, such as Boxee, Spotify, ZocDoc, Tumblr and AppNexus.

NY City Council

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In an effort to attract top creative talent for NY-based startups, NYC Uncubed is stepping away from tradition recruitment method. The tech talent fair, which is schedule to take place on April 26 from 1pm-7pm at the Altman building, will feature speakers from Etsy and Behance, in addition to recruiters from 80 NY-based startups.

According to BetaBeat, hosts Tumblr, Spotify and StackOverflow will contribute “fun” and relevant components to the event: an open-bar serving drinkings in tumbler glass, live music from Spotify, and a registration area designed by StackOverflow topped off with vinyl cutouts. Additionally, Shutterstock will host an interactive photo booth.

And of course, the event will have ping-pong and foosball, just like last year.

BetaBeat

The Xbox console with the S controller, made by Microsoft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

While the Entertainment Software Association cites that 72 percent of American households played computer or video games in 2011, NY’s share of the video game market is minuscule: 5 percent of companies directly involved in the video game industry are based in NY, according to MetroFocus. California, the largest hub for video game activity, maintains 40 percent of the market. NY startups, however, have been vying to make their mark in the industry.

Tiny Mantis, an independent video game developer founded by Nik Mikros, operates out of a 500-square-foot room in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn. With just two full-time employees and several freelancers,  its portfolio contains more than 50 games, ranging from flash banner games on websites to large apps for the iPad, MetroFocus notes.

To succeed, NY tech startups have to face difficult conditions: real estate is expensive, for video gaming companies there is a lack of programmers, and scarce tax breaks to lessen the financial burden. While Tiny Mantis recognizes the cumbersome task of getting to the top, it believes that to make it NY means it can make it anywhere.

“In New York City, there’s a huge pool of potential employees,” Harry Bogosian, an artist at Tiny Mantis, told MetroFocus.“There are so many talented people in New York City who want to work.”

MetroFocus

Wall Street sign on Wall Street (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wall Street technologists are heading elsewhere for employment opportunities.  Reasons behind this exodus include earning and growth potential, the ability to work on more interesting and innovative projects and the respect and clout of their possible employment avenue.

Financial services firms have recently fallen on hard financial times, and the reduction in IT budgets, layoffs and bonus freezes have left technologists looking for greener pastures, as many IT workers find Silicon Valley’s tech industry appealing for their career aspirations.

According to a Wall Street & Technology interview with Marc Adler, managing principal at SunGard Global Services, “technologists at most financial firms are being asked to work more hours while compensation stagnates.  Rather than be a slave to Wall Street’s bonus cycle, I figured, why not do something interesting for me?”

Wall Street & Technology