The U.S. job market is heating up. In fact, according to the latest Job Openings and Turnover Report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the market has officially turned a corner after continuously shedding jobs over the last year. The report shows that job openings increased to 7.4 million as of the last day of February, marking a 5.1 percent increase when compared with pre-pandemic numbers. This is encouraging news for jobseekers looking for new opportunities.
Below, Built In San Francisco checked in with five local companies that are currently hiring for a variety of positions across their engineering, product, marketing and sales teams. While the companies range from real estate to fintech and more, they all have one thing in common: employees who believe in the work they’re doing.
“We’re rapidly launching and constantly iterating on products and features that are in the best interest of the customer and create better overall outcomes for homeowners,” Sai Vishnubhatla, director of product development at Hippo Insurance, said.
Michael Newman is the director of product and engineering at CodeSignal, a skills-based assessment platform designed to help technical companies find talent. He was immediately drawn to the company because of its vision to create a better, more seamless hiring process for developers like himself and others searching for positions in the technical industry.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company, and why?
Early on, before I was even thinking of joining the team, I had a couple of conversations with Tigran, our CEO and founder. During our conversations, Tigran laid out a compelling, ambitious vision to discover talent everywhere and remove pedigree-based barriers to entry in the tech industry.
As a developer, I knew firsthand that interviews can be difficult and painful. It’s no fun to write code on a whiteboard and it doesn’t feel relevant or fair, either. Through the years, I’ve been lucky to work with talented peers from a variety of backgrounds, some with traditional four-year computer science degrees, and others completely self-taught. So, I knew that the resume wasn’t the best way to measure someone’s potential, and it was incredible to hear that this startup was trying to change that whole system.
As a hiring manager, I use our product to improve my hiring processes.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed or, more specifically, the work you’ll do to help your company get there?
Now that we have really demonstrated the need and demand for a standard of technical skill, I’m excited to continue pushing the boundaries of what we’re able to measure, depth-wise and breadth-wise. For example, that means trying to standardize skills for senior engineers. Can we measure one’s ability to design a maintainable, encapsulated interface? It also means expanding the variety of skills we can measure by branching into new technical domains and covering more technologies.
For our engineering team, we’re able to use our own product and philosophy to continue living our values as we scale up the team. As a hiring manager, I use our product to improve my hiring processes. As an end user, I’m able to convert my experiences into new ways to continue improving the product. It’s meaningful because we built our product and our team together, and it’s a constant reminder of our mission and purpose.
Andy Manoske is the principal product manager of cryptography and security at HashiCorp, a software company that develops datacenter management tools. As a tenured employee, Manoske stays at the company because of its commitment to fostering a culture of respect and teamwork.
As a tenured employee, what has been the biggest reason you’ve stayed at your company so long?
Despite our significant growth, the company’s focus on building an internal culture of respect, kindness and passion toward collaboratively solving hard problems with the open source community remains fundamental to how we operate. The same mission and culture that excited me to join when HashiCorp was a few dozen people continues as we near a few thousand.
I’m excited to work on solutions to these challenges with an amazing team.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed or, more specifically, the work you’ll do to help your company get there?
Building products at HashiCorp means pursuing solutions to some of the hardest problems in computer science, mathematics and software engineering. Some of the work we’re doing within cryptography and security has the potential to significantly improve how data is protected against hackers online, and I’m excited to work on solutions to these challenges with an amazing team.
When considering accepting a position at Qualia, a real estate software company that aims to digitize the entire home buying and selling process, Senior Product Manager Berkley Hinton was looking at two main factors. He wanted an employee-centric environment as well as a product with potential — both of which he found at Qualia.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company, and why?
There were two main factors I considered when I accepted my role at Qualia. First, I wanted to work for a company that puts its employees first. As a parent, my schedule is often in flux. This means it’s extremely important for me to have a strong work-life balance and a team that’s both understanding and flexible. Everyone at Qualia is kind, thoughtful and happy to offer support whenever possible. The company has a real dedication to the wellbeing of its employees, which I think is a sign of strong, empathetic leadership.
Second, I was looking for a product with significant potential. When I first interviewed with the company, I was impressed by the level of passion and enthusiasm I could hear in the voices of Qualia’s product and engineering teams. While I didn’t originally have a background in real estate, I immediately recognized the value in the type of infrastructure Qualia is building. I knew I wanted to be a part of the company and I was able to quickly get up to speed thanks to our extensive training programs.
Everyone at Qualia is kind, thoughtful and happy to offer support whenever possible.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed or, more specifically, the work you’ll do to help your company get there?
Looking to the future, I’m excited to continue transforming real estate by expanding Qualia’s product offerings. We’ve made great progress toward changing how homes are bought and sold, but there’s still so much work to be done.
We continue to discover outdated processes to modernize and user pain points to relieve. While I’m currently working on solutions for mortgage lenders, our aim is to build products for all types of real estate professionals. This is what I love most about working at Qualia. We’re part of the great community that is the foundation of the industry, which gives us a deep understanding of different people’s needs and how they interact with one another. Because of this, I believe we’re in a unique position to solve some of the most significant Rubik’s Cubes in real estate.
Bob Buch is the chief business officer at Bolt, a checkout experience platform for e-commerce brands. As someone with years of experience in a variety of industries, Buch was attracted to Bolt because it presented an opportunity to do business in new ways.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company, and why?
My decision to join Bolt was based on industry and culture. There’s no question that e-commerce has finally arrived, and with a serious tailwind from the changes brought about by the pandemic. The pace at which this space operates and the opportunity for innovation is happening at three to four times the speed of the fintech world I came from previously.
When I met Ryan, our CEO, several years ago, I remember being impressed with how thoughtful he was about building a culture and doing business in new ways. Things like our value of “writing over talking” — which has come in super handy with everyone being forced to work remotely. But the inception of the value was more related to the clarity of decision-making (i.e. it happens in writing with full transparency and not in siloed-hallway conversations). The “writing over talking” value also levels the playing field for those who are not the loudest person in the room. It favors those who can express themselves rationally with a compelling argument, and help others see the truth.
When I met our CEO, I remember being impressed with how thoughtful he was about building culture.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
The user account network that we’re building has the potential to help all retailers have the might and heft of Amazon when it comes to enabling a great checkout experience. Our vision is to end the use of guest checkout, to make all customers known users, and to start enabling retailers to have more of a member experience so they can better compete with Amazon.
This core value proposition is compelling to merchants today and will become unassailable the more our user network continues to expand. Beyond that, with so much happening in the e-commerce landscape, we are often stumbling right into other massive opportunities like loyalty, lead generation and social commerce.
Sai Vishnubhatla is the director of product management at home insurance company Hippo Insurance. He quickly found that the opportunity to work on high-impact initiatives that positively affect the company’s customers was a major reason to grow his career at Hippo.
What was the deciding factor for you when you accepted your job at your current company, and why?
As a product manager, the key differentiator and motivator for my success is the ability to execute high-impact initiatives and launch product features that positively impact our customers. I strongly believe that Hippo gives me the space to learn, execute and grow while enabling me to have a positive impact on both the top and bottom-line growth of the organization.
What excites me the most about our future is the direction that Hippo is leading the insurance industry in.”
Looking to the future, what excites you most about where your company is headed?
What excites me the most about our future is the direction that Hippo is leading the insurance industry in terms of addressing key customer and market needs. We’re rapidly launching and constantly iterating on products and features that are in the best interest of the customer and create better overall outcomes for homeowners across the country.
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