The Build #3: Love

We talk about being “in love” with our careers, but can use skills from the job hunt to help find a real relationship? In this episode of The Build, it’s the story of CandiDate.

Amber Wanner founded a company that blends traditional matchmaking with modern technical recruiting and that’s helping developers and other IT professionals in the Philadelphia region discover new jobs and new relationships.

More about today’s guest:

• Connect with Amber Wanner on LinkedIn and Twitter.
• From Technically Philly, Meet Vette.

Transcript

Announcer:
From 2820 Radio in Philadelphia, it's The Build, conversations with entrepreneurs and innovators about their dreams, their triumphs, and their challenges.

Joe:
Love. We talk about how much we love our spouses, we love our jobs, we even love where we live, but how exactly do we discover just who and what to fall in love with and what do we do after we find out? Today on The Build I'm talking with Amber Wanner. She founded a company that blends traditional matchmaking with modern technical recruiting and she's helping developers and other IT professionals in the Philadelphia region discover new jobs and new relationships. It's the story of CandiDate coming up next on The Build.

Announcer:
The Build is made possible with support from 2820 Press providing business consulting and content strategy services to customer obsessed companies nationwide. More information at 2820Press.com.

Joe:
I'm Joe Taylor Jr. It’s The Build joined today by Amber Wanner from CandiDate, welcome.

Amber:
Thank you.

Joe:
You have an interesting story. We've heard a lot lately about companies called ZeroStack startups, the idea that you can actually start a company in the technical space and not necessarily have to launch with a big, expensive website. Tell us a little bit about CandiDate, what you … Candidate, I have to make sure I reemphasize the 'date', right?

Amber:
Yes.

Joe:
Tell us about the company and how it came about.

Amber:
Absolutely, so CandiDate, the idea behind it is to fulfill both aspects of our CandiDate size, professional and personal. the company on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so that way our candidates can ultimately reach self-actualization in life. Yeah, it's interesting, we are in the process right now of building our website, but I started the company last August which it's almost a year and I still can't believe that. We're building it, but prior to that we have been organically growing our database on the professional and the personal side.

Joe:
Before you branded this business as CandiDate you worked as a technical recruiter?

Amber:
Yes, that is correct.

Joe:
Tell us, for folks that aren't familiar with that term, what's a day in the life of a technical recruiter? What were you actually doing day-to-day?

Amber:
Sure, so a lot of recruiting firms don't necessarily have the best name in the tech community. Developers are afraid of recruiters and I didn't want that negative connotation being someone that; We were trying to help the tech community, but I found that these startup companies in Philadelphia are incredible and incredibly growing and I wanted to really be a part of it. I started the company, so that way you really can work with that tech community to help them out. Again the reason why we started the dating site is because we want to fulfill our candidates' lives and the idea really is to grow Philly and the tech scene here. We do want to bring folks outside of Philly into Philly by telling them that we can help them find a job and then if they are interested we can fulfill that personal aspect as well by finding them a significant other.

Joe:
You land in Philadelphia from where?

Amber:
Right now we really have been working with Philly in terms of the current talent that's here which is awesome, it really is. More and more we're working with these startup companies that have very specific needs and skill sets for these candidates. We're trying to compete with Silicon Valley and New York and all those cities and Philadelphia as, I think the mayor even said it's a big small city.

Joe:
You're in this big small city, there's tremendous growth among employers that require candidates, folks with highly technical, very specific skills. Your job at this point is to evaluate someone that you meet at an event, someone that you know from around town and you can identify, for instance, that this is a person that knows the Python programming language. They know PHP, they know LAMP Stack, all this great technical jargon. You can decipher this and know, okay, I've now met developer and know that he or she is a good fit for company and it's not just startups, it's very large organizations that are bringing highly technical people into their midst. How do you evaluate what skill set somebody actually has?

Amber:
Sure, and it's interesting because with these startup companies in particular the cultural fit is almost just as important as the technical fit, someone who really fits in in a startup, someone who really understands the day in, day out of a startup company. Finding someone that has both the technical and the cultural soft skills if you will is. That's where we really evaluate them on a personal level, so we'll do lunch with them, we'll really get to know them. We just had an event last night and we had a ton of developers there and it wasn't pressure to say, okay, at a tech event where recruiters they have to meet a certain amount of contacts. It was a very organic thing, building conversations.

Amber:
Our goal really is to build relationships with our candidates and so that way they confide in us and they trust us. Maybe they're not looking for a job at the moment, but they are looking for a date, it's not exclusive to one or the other. That is something I wanted to point out for our married candidates, it's not exclusive to one or the other. If you just want a job and you're in the tech space we’ll absolutely help them find a job.

Amber:
What's interesting is that if the candidate goes through the dating portion and they find that they're not happy where they're at or they want to explore other opportunities we already have them in our database, so we can easily - If we have a position we can say hey, if you're interested this is what we have if you want to be in a different situation. Everything is already in our database, we've done the background check, the references. We know for the most part they're financially stable which adds credibility to our daters and we know they're a good person. It's not like online dating where you don't know them and you could be catfished as people would say, so we know them from a personal standpoint.

Joe:
Let's take a look at the pivot because one could make a pretty successful career out of being a technical recruiter especially in a large city like Philadelphia. At some point you get the idea or the suggestion that you’re doing all of this personal inventory on candidates going into technical firms and maybe you could use the same set of skills and competencies to match people with personal connections.

Amber:
Absolutely, and it's funny because I founded the company because I would place a candidate and a job and they would be very happy in the job. They said you found me this awesome job, now I'm in such a great place in my life, financially I feel I hit that mark. Now if you could only find me a wife. It would come up all the time and they were kidding, but partially serious. I think I mentioned this in the other interview is that they would say thanks for the feedback on the interview, now if only you could tell me how my match date went last night. That's something also that we offer is the feedback after the date. Just as we would offer the feedback after the interview, we offer the feedback after the date.

Joe:
How does that work? Do you get feedback directly from the person that your candidate went on the date with?

Amber:
Yeah, so it's feedback from both parties. Right now it's just a phone call, how'd it go. We sit down with them, we bring them back into our office and figure out what worked, what didn't work. We really understand the candidate or the CandiDate if you will. In the future we definitely plan on having something on the website where they can submit their feedback. If it's positive and they go on the next date- If the person for whatever reason because you never know ultimately until you're on the date, if it doesn't work out we'll meet with you, really understand again what you're looking for. Just like on the recruiting side a client will tell us this is what I'm looking for, but sometimes they don't exactly know themselves. Trial and error we figure it out together and it's the same way on the dating side.

Joe:
On the recruiting side I know a big part of your model is you're very present at a lot of local events. Developers, technical folks have- Maybe it's a stereotype, but a tendency to be a little bit more introverted than folks in other lines of work. How do you draw people out into a comfort zone or how do you get them to extend their comfort zone to feel not just comfortable talking with you, but to explore what are some pretty significant life changes. It sounds like in an interaction with CandiDate means new job, potentially new spouse.

Amber:
Yeah, only if they're looking. If they're not looking then 

Joe:
It's not forced on anyone, it's not a requirement to the service.

Amber:
It's just honestly - What I say is that it's just an additional service that we offer. Again it's that piece in their life that's not currently being fulfilled whether it's a job or it is a date. Again we're trying to build Philadelphia for our candidates to want to work, play, and start a family. That's the end goal if that's in their long-term goals.

Joe:
Coming back to the idea of your clients are candidates who apply to CandiDate for a variety of reasons. What are some of the typical ways that you coach them to help understand how they can show off their skills and show off the benefits of being in a relationship?

Amber:
Sure. It's interesting, we actually just started a meet up group also that I’d like to throw out there. We haven't really promoted it yet. Again we're working on getting that website up and running, but it's called Philly Singles and Tech. It's basically going to be a tech event where there's tech talks and a bunch of likeminded people solving problems through technology and just interacting with folks that are very similar to them. Then at the end we're going to come in and we're going to say, okay, so how do you navigate your professional life versus your personal life? How can you make that time to date someone and we're also going to discuss dating disasters and dating in this day and age because I'm dating in this day and age and it is hard. It is very, very hard. I need to be candidated myself.

Joe:
Explain to an old married dude like me what's going on, what makes things challenging for folks to find matches these days.

Amber:
Sure. It's all online, it really is. I'll be sitting at a bar and I've talked to other women in the same situation, we'll be sitting at a bar and we'll make eye contact with someone. It seems like they're interested, but they're on their phone probably on Tinder or something in the virtual dating world rather than coming up to someone like me or other women that are single and actually having a conversation. I feel with the online dating and I'm not throwing it - saying that it's a bad thing because I know successful relationships that have come out of it, but it's just hard to have that one-on-one interaction in person. I always say I love snail mail and I love when people write letters and stuff, it's just like the old-fashioned way. With this it's text, it's whatever else, and a lot of things get translated the wrong way and misconstrued. Meeting in person and everything which is what we're doing with our candidates is the key, it really is key.

Joe:
What happened do you think that made us lose the ability to either interact with each other face-to-face in a successful level? Did we lose that along the way to the digital space?

Amber:
I feel in a way we have because it's just so accessible, it's so easy. It's so easy to just send a text and say what are your plans later. Whereas for a single woman like me getting a call saying I'd love to take you out to dinner, are you free tonight, would mean so much more. Every single interview or whatever I did with our daters they've said the same thing. I think that with CandiDate we'll be able to coach these single men and women just how to navigate through it.

Joe:
It sounds like most of your candidates are guys.

Amber:
Mostly yes, but we do have some girls as well.

Joe:
We’ll talk about the guys first.

Amber:
Sure.

Joe:
What are some of the things that you coach them to do differently when they're interacting with a woman?

Amber:
Just like what I touched on because I recently had a situation where it's a really busy developer tech candidate that is working on a startup or super busy and had to cancel plans unfortunately because something came up. Being canceled on stinks, it's not the best feeling ever. I think apologizing and saying I'd love to take you out this day instead, kind of following up what we're calling, would be something that we would coach them on as well.

Amber:
It's something that again I feel it's hard to put that much effort when you're working so hard and everything, so I think just to take a quick second to step aside and say, okay, I'm going to follow up. That's the biggest thing. Something on the professional side with us and everything it's all about follow-up, feedback and follow-up. That's all anyone really asks for. On the recruiting side we always want to follow up with our candidates and whether we have the position for them or we don't, always follow up and I think again on the dating side as well that's very important to say, okay, I can't do it this day, but let's do it this day.

Joe:
A client engages with you primarily to get not just the connections, but that coaching and the accountability to make sure that they're following through.

Amber:
Absolutely.

Joe:
Where do you find potential matches for your candidates? Is that through online dating services, is that through the events? Are you keeping a database of people that you meet and think man, I'd love to place that person with one of my clients?

Amber:
Absolutely. I think that that's actually the easy part believe it or not because there are a ton of single - women here in Philadelphia that just want someone who has a job, is a real person and has been vetted out and has common interests with them and they know that for a fact. Coming through CandiDate we do vet them out just like the recruitment process. We go through a ton of resumes and we figure out what's best for the client on the professional side and then in terms of on the personal side. A very similar situation, it's all mirrored.

Amber:
On the professional side I would always coach candidates how to go on an interview, how to speak to high-level executives and that's something … I have been working with some of the schools around here. I'll be meeting with tomorrow to discuss how we can coach these tech candidates that are coming out of school, the seniors that have these coops and internships and to coach them how to go on an interview and go into the real world.

Joe:
It feels like there are lots of opportunities for developers and IT professionals to operate in the fairly casual startup space, but what feedback do you hear from established executives at larger organizations about the interactions they're having with job candidates?

Amber:
I guess once again right out of school it's hard because schools do a great job to prepare candidates textbook-wise, but when you actually enter the real world you understand that it's a lot different and you don't know until you experience it and I think that real life experience and just being real on an interview. I always say if you can get the manager to laugh you're in because you have to build that rapport and that's something I definitely coach my candidates with and everything. The clients, they really again are looking for that cultural fit. They feel if you're a good developer then you can pick up on any skill set pretty much, but the cultural fit is something that is hard to come by.

Joe:
Cultural fit means different things in different organizations, right? Give me some examples of what organizations really look for, what do they mean when they say you're a great fit for our culture or you're not a great fit for our culture.

Amber:
I think it really comes down to that high-touch interaction with the clients' clients. It's that client interfacing skills, someone that can really communicate and again build rapport with people that they don't know, people that they're doing business with. Whether you're a developer or a salesperson it's important. I think we're in 2015, head down coder isn't necessarily what our clients are looking for. They're looking for someone who can actually carry a conversation, someone who is a real person and really is passionate about what they do.

Amber:
The passion is the most important thing. Find me with a candidate and they are exuding so much passion I will get on the phone with the CEO of whatever company I feel they're a good fit for and I'll be like you have to meet this person because they are amazing. I didn't necessarily technically vet them out and look at their code because I'm not qualified to do that. The way that they're talking about their code and how passionate they are and they have these side projects that they're doing you have to meet them. With a client recently I was like you're probably going to hire him on the spot and he's like we don't do that. Sure enough that was definitely the outcome.

Joe:
The proof it sounds like is usually in the portfolio of work, the work can speak for itself. The interview process is very much about can you engage like an adult human in interactions with other team members, clients, customers, tradeshow attendees. It sounds like the question that many employers are asking for is are you going to do something that embarrasses us at some point.

Amber:
Yeah, you're the face of the company whether you are the CEO or you're the network engineer. You are representing that company and that's really important for the face of the company.

Joe:
Speaking of faces of the company one thing I know a lot of companies, especially larger organizations, are very concerned with is diversity. It's a very big challenge especially here in Philadelphia for us to encourage women to get into more traditional, technical roles. We find tremendous benefits when we see diverse teams, but what are some of the roadblocks, what are some of the reasons that you feel the women professionals that you talk to might not go for some of the jobs that are available right now?

Amber:
One thing, I recently had the opportunity to meet the folks from [inaudible 00:19:53] and I think what they are doing is phenomenal. I really do, I think it's amazing and I think Philadelphia can definitely benefit from it. Actually my best friend who I love dearly is a computer science major right now and she interned at a company called Clutch in Ambler and she loved it. She started off doing one thing, she interned every single summer pretty much throughout college and it built her skill set. I think these companies taking a chance on not women, but junior developers who have potential I think is really incredible. What's interesting is she said that in her computer science class she's the only girl. Most of her classes she's the only girl and I think that is something that I think maybe even high school should start to prepare these students for before they even get into college. Do you know what I mean, so that - Because computer science is extremely exciting.

Amber:
I met with a candidate yesterday and she was saying that her mom was a developer in the '60s and she said back then it was almost like - It wasn't as sought after as it is now. It was more so like a construction worker. It was very basic, but the same stuff - A lot of the schools instead of having a computer science program or degree it was a lot of trade schools and everything. That was interesting for me to hear because I had no idea about that. She was like, you know what, I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it and now she's a phenomenal developer working for Oracle and she's been doing it for years. She was in Silicon Valley and now she's here in Philadelphia and she came here for a company which is awesome. My best friend, she's looking to move to Philadelphia when she graduates this year.

Joe:
For folks that are coming to Philadelphia, coming back to the idea that Philadelphia is a very social town, there's lots of events. Pretty uniformly when I ask folks who are recruiters where do you find your candidates they say oh, who hangs out at the events? How do you make an event comfortable for a relatively introverted developer to come out and feel this is a safe space for me to be vulnerable?

Amber:
I think that's a great question because I recently made a hire, Karin Wolok, who's phenomenal, she's amazing. She didn't come from her current background, she worked for Live Nation and she did events and she did VIP and everything, but she was networking all the time and making people feel comfortable because she wasn't out there expecting to find a developer at this event per say. If it happens that's awesome. Both them, the client and us win, but if not we maintain the relationship and then you start seeing these same candidates at the other events.

Amber:
Again last night was her birthday party and she invited all the developers that she met and it's in a social setting that is no pressure, no one's trying to recruit anyone, but everyone was having a good time. I got back to my computer last night and I had emails of people reaching out to us now for opportunities because they do feel comfortable with us and they know that we're looking out for their best interests. That's definitely I think from a recruiter standpoint that is something that a lot of recruiters do struggle with because - It's interesting because I was at a tech event the other day and I always wear dresses and stuff

Amber:
and I definitely stuck out a little bit and 

Joe:
Because what's the normal dress code?

Amber:
That's the thing, a lot of recruiting companies it's suit and tie, so you can pick a recruiter out at a tech event in two seconds and tech candidates know that. They try to steer clear of them pretty much because they again do have that negative connotation. I think not going in it with any expectations other than making connections is the most important thing really. I may have 20 positions right now and I'm at this tech event and every single candidate is well qualified for it, but I'm not going to push it. I'm going to make that connection and almost let them come to me.

Joe:
What do you use to keep track of all the relationships in your business right now?

Amber:
Sure, so right now We're developing a custom dashboard where we can accumulate … You have these candidates on the professional and personal and the clients, so it's something that we're building accustomed to some of the website and everything that we're doing. Right now it's just been an Excel spreadsheet, I know taking it back.

Joe:
This comes back to that idea of ZeroStack.

Amber:
Yes, yes.

Joe:
You started this business, you came up with the brand, you positioned this, but it wasn't like you said I'm going to create CandiDate and you went into a cave and went coding for six months. You just started telling people that this is what I do now.

Amber:
Yeah, and it's funny because I worked at a Starbucks for the first couple of months. What's really funny is that I met a lot of my new clients and candidates at Starbucks which I love Starbucks.

Joe:
What was that process like? Were you just eavesdropping or just observing what they were doing?

Amber:
No, I guess what's interesting is that if you go somewhere every day people start to recognize you, you know what I mean, and so they're like oh, what do you do and then I tell them and they would tell me. The guy was a CEO of a tech company and I was like awesome, we should keep in touch and then he reached out to me about positions. The one time I was talking to Karin, my new hire about a position, describing it because I had just met with the manager. Some guy across the way interrupted me, he was like, 'Excuse me, are you a tech recruiter?' I was like, maybe. He was like, I'm a Python developer. I was like that's exactly the position that I had. I'm not even kidding, it was so serendipitous, but unfortunately-

Joe:
There's an advantage to doing business in public in a typical way.

Amber:
I absolutely agree.

Joe:
This is what real estate agents do.

Amber:
Do they?

Joe:
The upper end of the cliche is if you're at the airport and you hear - For a brief period in my life I was in technical sales and the cliche is - the sales guy in the suit standing at the gate screaming his numbers into the cell phone because he wants everybody to know he's in sales.

Amber:
That is so funny.

Joe:
We've all met that guy.

Amber:
Absolutely.

Joe:
I think there's something about

Amber:
That it's not that guy.

Joe:
No. It's not that it's an effective strategy, but there's something to the idea of actually being physically present and accessible in a way that people can say oh, yeah, there's Amber, she comes in for a latte every day at the same time.

Amber:
I am a regular at the Starbucks in Wayne and they know my order like the back of their hand. It's funny because you meet these connections and I met a business intelligence architect and he's working remote and he's like my contract ends next week, what do you have? I was like that's awesome. It's just so cool to meet them in a social setting and everything. We recently got an office though in Philly. It's one of the co-working spaces, Industrious, so we've been able to collaborate also with the companies in there. Just like Benjamin's Desk, there's a lot of tech companies. I think it's a phenomenal place to network, get to understand the tech community and I think that's a huge benefit to that. There are benefits to working at a Starbucks and then there are benefits to working out of a coworking space, but I did get shooshed a couple of times at Starbucks.

Joe:
You know at a certain point there's a boundary that you have to set.

Amber:
Yes, definitely.

Joe:
The other thing I wanted to touch on, too, because you said that you went to the Starbucks in Wayne. For folks listening that aren't necessarily familiar with Philadelphia, we hear quite a lot about the influx of young, urban professionals in Center City. Yet there's a corridor of technology that stretches for miles, dozens of miles out through the main line out into places like Great Valley and Malverne and beyond, so you have to trek a little bit to be where your clients and your potential matches are.

Amber:
Absolutely, and this is actually a really funny story, but there was a candidate that worked at a large company and it was weird for him to meet me for coffee close by where he was. I was like do you want to conduct the interview in my car and so …

Joe:
I'm not surprised. I've been a manager in that situation and know when I see one of my people with someone who is clearly a technical recruiter. The conversation I have at that point is are you happy, is everything going okay? Do you just know that person casually?

Amber:
Exactly, he was like I'm just going to tell them that you're my girlfriend.

Joe:
Do we need to have a conversation? Is that really to say that's my girlfriend?

Amber:
Or my sister from out of state. Yeah, it was really funny, but we ended up conducting the interview in my car and I was like this isn't the most safe thing, but at the same time - We were in the parking lot and everything and it worked and he got the job. It's so funny because to this day he tells everyone about that and you just got to do what you got to do sometimes.

Joe:
Thinking about the long-term success of CandiDate, you earn your revenue how?

Amber:
For CandiDate again the client - We find the candidate a job, then we find them a date. Again not exclusive to one or the other just for the folks listening if they're just coming in now. The client, the company hiring pays us for the candidate, so they normally pay - We're competitive in the tech space, it's around 10, 15% which is-

Joe:
That's a typical fee.

Amber:
No, typical is 25%.

Joe:
I was going to say typical I hear 25 to 30.

Amber:
Yeah, yeah.

Joe:
I've got a client that typically pays 30 to get it done fast.

Amber:
Yes, yes.

Joe:
That's a step down, but that’s basically because you have relatively little overhead -

Amber:
Exactly, and that's -

Joe:
- being a smaller company.

Amber:
Because right now we can. We do have an investor and we obviously need to hit our numbers and everything, but we can be flexible with that, we can. We're a startup company, we're working with the startup companies. We understand the budget and that's really what we go into when we meet the client, what's your budget because we don't want to put you in a situation where you're in an awkward situation. You find a candidate or you find a couple of candidates that you love and you can't necessarily at this time afford a 25, 30% fee. We definitely work with our clients on that. I have the one client that was like I love your work, we're going to do 20%. I was like, okay.

Joe:
I won't stop you. That again is a customary arrangement between employers and recruiting agencies that there's a premium of - percent of a candidate's salary over a certain amount of time and that's just a given. My understanding is that it typically - The cost to replace somebody on your team is between 60 to 90% of what their annual salary would be anyway, so unless you've got a really extensive HR team that's why the recruiting piece is attractive. For potential clients who want to be placed there's no upfront cost for them.

Amber:
No, for the candidates, for our candidates, our developers and the folks in IT there's no fee to them at all, it's a free service. We'll give you coaching, we'll help you with your resume. That's something that we're happy to do. It's not a bother to us, we're happy to do it. Again we really love the tech community and the startup community and it's so important to us to see them grow. The one company I'm working with right now, I met them a couple of years ago when they were about 3 people and now they're 35 people and growing. I'm working with them on a custom situation with a fee structure that makes sense for them, it makes sense for us and we have almost 10 positions with them because of that. They're only working with us and they think that definitely says a lot about the relationship that we maintained and that's something that we plan on doing with every single client is having that relationship.

Joe:
Who negotiates the compensation package?

Amber:
That's something that I do, I do right now as the founder and CEO of the company. That's something that I do, but I sit down with the client and go over that.

Joe:
Do you find that clients would typically ask for more or less than what you would get for them?

Amber:
I sit down with them and ask them what their budget is and give them the average where we've been with clients and we customize it for them.

Joe:
This way you're able to sit down with a candidate and say - is your compensation package. It's in line with what the rest of the team and with other folks we've placed there were in comparable situations. I feel a lot of folks don't know what to ask for. I know in my own company where we've been hiring and people have come in and said my salary requirements are this and I look at that and go add 20% to that, so I don'™t feel bad because you're way undervaluing yourself. I've had that conversation in the last three companies I've worked at.

Amber:
A lot of companies from what I find go off of what the candidate is currently making. There are situations where maybe they got them out of college and they are not making market value. What we do also is we go online and really look at the market rate for that type of position, how much it would be in that and put that together and send it to a client. We just had a DevOps position with a company and the quote they came back with was a little bit low and it was because we had to educate them on that.

Amber:
I find that with clients a lot we have to do that because they’re busy running the company, they don't - This may be a new position. It's hard to really figure out what that number would look like, so those algorithms that really track that from companies around the area is really good. Then talking with the candidate - We talk to them about what would make you want to leave where you are right now? What will make you happy? What will make you fulfilled because that's what we're trying to do is fulfill our candidate.

Joe:
What'll make you happy in terms of the growth of CandiDate over the next say five years?

Amber:
Yeah, so it's interesting, again we really have not - Since the website is not up and running right now, it will be in a couple of weeks, but we haven't really been promoting it as much as we could be and we've been getting a ton of business by not even - Every single person that The tech community is taking it in so well. Like CandiDate is - It's so funny because I'll be at a meeting and I'll meet someone. No, I was in Downingtown and I was talking to someone and he was like, 'Oh, what do you do?' I said, 'Candidate,' or his brother said, 'CandiDate.' He was like, 'Wait, you work for CandiDate?' He's in the tech space and I was like, 'What do you mean?'

Joe:
Right now you have to be clear two employees.

Amber:
Yes, and we're in Downingtown which is pretty far from Philadelphia. How did he - He's a developer and everything for a startup company out there, but he was like I was just talking to someone about you guys and that made me. In situations like that, the small things like that make me really excited that we are going to be making a difference here in Philadelphia and growing Philadelphia's tech community.

Joe:
Longer term do you attempt to clone yourself? How do you build out, how do you scale, how do you grow the company in a way that not everyone pretty soon is going to - You're not going to have the bandwidth to take care of everyone that possibly wants to work with you, so what's your strategy to make it grow?

Amber:
In order to really scale a recruiting company and just going off of that is to open more offices and everything. What we plan on doing is while we are starting here in Philly and we will always be made in Philadelphia, we definitely plan to expand out to other cities and help them grow their tech community, too. A candidate was just telling me the other day that there's a tech scene - I wouldn't say it's Chicago or something where they don't feel these tech - I don't know if he was reading an article or something, but they don't feel that there are any women. What was funny is that he has friends and they feel like there's no men that are single, so it's just really opening the eyes of this world. It's different, it's new and it's outside the box, no one's done it yet, combining with the recruiting and the matchmaking. It makes sense, it absolutely makes sense and I'm a firm believer in that and getting the reaction from everyone has been very, very reassuring for us.

Joe:
On the matchmaking side.

Amber:
Yes.

Joe:
Do you find you make better matches with people that are within the same technical community, or is it a better match to put a technical person with a non-technical person?

Amber:
Yes and no. It's all depending on what that candidate is looking for. If they want someone who's in the tech community we're going to find someone that's in the tech community. If they want someone that's not, someone that's really into tennis or really into cooking, we're going to find someone that it fits what they're looking for. Again it brings it back to the recruiting piece, the client says, okay, I'm looking for this, this, and this and we find someone based on that and it's done the exact same way.

Joe:
What are some of the things that you have to explain to coach folks who are non-technical about what they might be getting into if they marry a highly technical person?

Amber:
It's interesting because we have a situation recently that the candidate again was really busy working at a startup company and canceled plans, so just letting her know that he's a busy person, he definitely wants to settle down. If you get to that point where he is spending that time with you then you know that he's really into you because I know that for myself - Again running this company and everything, I have no time at all. I have no time, but I think that if I were to meet the right person that I would make that time. I think with these developers and in the tech space just making that time, but letting them know upfront they are working at a startup, they are going to be busy, just letting them know to understand that going into it.

Joe:
Last question, what does Philadelphia need more of right now?

Amber:
In terms of tech?

Joe:
Sure.

Amber:
We get a lot of DevOps. That's a big one right now is DevOps. I have several needs for DevOps because the term DevOps could mean a number of different things. That’s a buzzword. From what my candidates, I'll talk to them and be like, so you do DevOps? They're like yeah, I've been doing DevOps for the last couple of years, but my name is systems administrator or whatever, but they dabble in code. That's something that we have a lot of positions with. We also have Python developers and Ruby on Rails developers. Yeah, we have a lot of positions right now. I'm not sure when this is going out, but when it does check out the website because hopefully it will be ready by then.

Joe:
Excellent. Amber, thank you so much.

Amber:
Thank you.

Joe:
Good luck with CandiDate.

Amber:
Thank you so much, I appreciate it.

Joe:
We'll check in with you in another year and see how things have grown.

Amber:
Sounds good. I really appreciate your time.

Announcer:
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Build.