Open Letter: Reflecting on the recruiting event at Caltech
Hello Team,
Today we had a recruiting event at Caltech (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_Technology) and I was humbled by the experience.
It was intimidating at first. For the very first time, I saw Camino Financial trying to recruit, in the physical world, alongside great technology giants like Google, Facebook and Activision. I was literally flanked by a Google booth to my right and a Facebook/Instagram booth to my left. To make matters worse, I was outnumbered (each company had at least 4 engineers per booth) and I was a little late to the campus (carried our poster and my computer monitor on my own while trying to find parking, after our sprint planning meeting). And naturally, everyone flocked to big tech companies inquiring internship opportunities.
Then, it dawned on me – this not a level playing field. And it never has been for us. In the early days, countless investors said NO because they have issues believing in our community and the opportunity that’s associated with it. Thanks to Sean, Kenny and everyone on the team, people are starting to believe otherwise. So I calibrated, changed up my recruiting pitch a bit and just talked to everyone that happen to be watching our Fusion video. I told Caltech students our origin story and explained how various technologies and their applications have amplified our business. On top of that, I talked about a few stellar interns we have had in the past. The students really resonated with all that.
At the end, I won over the crowd and collected a stack of resumes from students whose GPAs made mine look sad and received praises like:
“Among all the companies here, you guys are most interesting!”
“This so meaningful whatever you guys are doing.”
“Wow, what a technical problem you have.”
As I was leaving to go pick up my kids, the Director of Career Development Center came by enthusiastically to chat. To my surprise, she asked if I would be interested to speak to the students again on a separate occasion! The day couldn’t have ended any better.
We won the battle but the war for talent is not over yet. Today, you can help level the playing field by spreading the word to your friends and family that Camino is hiring software engineers in both Los Angeles and Mexico City. The best way to do this is to re-share and react to this post on LinkedIn.
Don’t do this for me because I have asked you. Do this for our community, for our families and for ourselves. Thank you.
Cho-Nan