Yesterday marked another interesting day at Zillow as we embarked on an awareness and recruiting initiative not likely seen before in Seattle. As you may know, we have a number of job openings and we wanted to find a way to attract the top notch people who are not currently in the job market but who might be persuaded…
Yesterday morning around 7am we split into 3 teams. The teams consisted of employees from Recruiting, Test, Design and Development. Each team picked up Top Pot Doughnuts and coffee and headed to one of three Seattle Metro bus stops and park and rides. We chose the location based on the highest possible density of our target audience– technical people working on the Eastside of the greater Seattle area, and living on the Westside.
As people came to the bus stops we offered them free coffee and doughnuts. It was fun to see how excited and relieved some people were to receive a good dose of sugar and caffeine as they awaited their commute. I used to be one of these commuters before I joined Zillow and I can truly appreciate their situation.
We had a lot of fun discussions; we chatted about the real estate market, Zillow’s success to date, the uncanny six degrees of separation in Seattle, jobs, the commute, downtown lifestyle and more. As an added bonus we were also able to feed at least a half a dozen homeless people.
All in all I think this was not only was this a terrific recruiting idea, but it also spread more word of mouth about Zillow.com. As folks got on the bus one couldn’t help but notice the plethora of coffee cups, each which read: “How’s the view from your bus seat? Work downtown at a world class startup offering fantastic opportunities, a fun work place and amazing views!”
