I'm told that when you're attractive, it can go to your head.
You believe everyone is interested in you and it's therefore hard to decide who deserves more than a glance and a sneer from your perfect visage.
A start-up called Hipster has decided that it knows how to make attractive job seekers believe it should be their first and only date.
Unfortunately, we're only talking engineers here. So Hipster is offering some touchingly precise inducements to show its intentions are good: $10,000 and beer, for example. Yes, a year's supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon.
It doesn't stop there. Hipster's Web site adds that new recruits will get a bike, a pair of Buddy Holly glasses, a pair of authentic skinny jeans, a pinstriped bow tie, mustache-grooming services, and a pair of (worn, brown) boots.
Hipster is, so it says, "building a fun way to uncover the vast amount of information about real-world locations." Which sounds like a sort of local question and answer thingy on the go.
(Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)Doug Ludlow, one of the founders of Hipster, told the New York Times: "As you know, recruiting is insanely competitive right now, so we wanted to do something that would break through the noise, and get the attention of the people we're trying to reach."
Hipster is reportedly proud that this sort of incentivizing is far more effective than the hundreds of thousands the company would have to pay those slightly leechlike little middle people known as recruiters.
Naturally, there will be those who believe that arrogant youths who happen to have coding ability don't deserve this sort of attention. There will be those who say they don't deserve brown boots, even if they're worn. And that they certainly don't deserve mustache-grooming services, especially as so many of them have no genetic capability to grow even the most rudimentary facial hair.
I, though, admire Hipster's initiative.
Without these people, the founders might never be able to make serious money. They might never be able to afford infinite supplies of skinny jeans and Pabst Blue Ribbon.
With this offer, they are revealing their own personal charm--and that of their brand. You see, they are even offering to give the same incentive to someone who recommends a new employee. Buddy Holly glasses and all.
I hope the Web site will feature pictures of every new recruit, wearing the new gear and, hopefully, after a sip or two of the PBR. I am sure that would be the finest recruitment ad Hipster could ever make.
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