The Big Top Is Hiring

A Different (Better) Kind of Jobs Fair
Tech Jobs Under The big Top on Technorati ScentTrailChris Heavily, one of MapQuest’s founders, is a smart, creative, generous guy. Chris’s latest “give back” gift to Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill) residents, Tech Jobs Under The Big Top, premiered Tuesday May 24th at the American Tobacco Campus Bay 7 Durham, North Carolina. Tech Jobs Under The Big Top flipped job fair formats on their heads; about 500 people, job seekers and start up founders / CEO's / presenters, walked past peanut barrels into a large open room with small tables, balloons, acrobats, a small stage and a large screen. Tech Jobs Under The Big Top’s interesting job fair twist? Have start up entrepreneurs pitch job seekers.

Fifteen companies ranging from Ad Zerk to Geo Magic made three to eight minute presentations. Every aspect of start up life was in evidence including creative brilliance, technical glitches, successes, failures, fun, humor, passion and pathos. I loved Tech Jobs Under The Big Top. Many of attendees felt the same planning to recommend the next Big Top technology job fair to friends. Kudos to every company for, as founder Chris Heavily noted, paying to be part of Big Top’s experiment. Stand out presentations included:

Spring Metrics

"Web analytic suck,” Spring Metrics Co-Founder and CEO Doug Kaufman said. Could Doug have said a truer thing? “We create conversion metrics,” he explained. As a former E-Commerce Director I say Hallelujah Spring Metrics.

ReverbNation

What do you call a site adding 70,000 bands a month? What site already has 1.3 million member bands generating 120 million page views a month? Who has grown 500% in the last year? Answer to all questions is ReverbNation.
The way we buy electricity is stupid according to PlotWatt. PlotWatt’s technology puts price tags on electricity creating feedback loops consumers use to lower electric bills by thousands of dollars a year. As North Carolina heads into 90+ degree weather again a single question struck. Where do I sign up?

Other cool presentations included Stat Sheet, Appia, Shoeboxed, ThinkRelevance and WirelessGeneration. Will other startup meccas adopt Tech Jobs Under The Big Top’s unusual job fair format? If the “give back” leaders in Austin, San Francisco or Boston are reading I highly recommend it. Are you a C Sharp, .Net, Ruby on Rails programmer or sales engineer who wants to work for a cool startup in Raleigh, Durham or Chapel Hill? Send resumes to your favorite Big Top startup. They're hiring.
by:Martin Smith :technorati.com/