Social-media manager Amber Christensen decorates cookies with her
dog Gus during the monthly birthday party for dogs in December at Rover.
The Seattle-based online service connects dog owners to sitters, day
care, walkers and other services a pet owner might need. (Sy Bean / The
Seattle Times)
Dogs at work? Better
parental leave? In these boom times of Seattle technology, one of the
biggest challenges has been filling jobs as the demand for workers
exceeds the supply of candidates. “It’s definitely a candidate’s
market,” says a recruiter.
Seattle Times technology reporter
Scott Porad badly wanted to hire Mike Hansen to work at Rover, a Seattle dog-sitting startup.
Porad, Rover’s chief technology officer, knew just how to get Hansen,
a software developer, to exit the interview process at Google, where he
was being considered for a job that would probably pay much more. He
would tell Hansen about Rover’s thoroughly dog-friendly benefits.
“Mike
is the owner of two dogs that he loves,” Porad said. “He felt like the
purpose of what we were doing was more meaningful for him and
appreciated the fact that he could bring his dogs to work here.”
Today, Hansen works at Rover’s office, which is
crawling with dogs. It’s an homage to the company’s daily work of
connecting pet owners with sitters, but also an attractive recruiting
feature at the growing startup.