Big Data, Big Pay

Lately, a growing number of companies are leveraging big data for L human resources and recruiting (1), and Gild is a company that offers technology specifically designed for recruiting software developers. The company used its own software to hire a Rails programmer in a most unconventional way. Here’s the story.

Jade Dominguez didn’t quite fit the typical profile for a programmer. He didn’t go to college. He taught himself programming because he needed a website for a custom T-shirts company he had started. But he was obsessed with programming and contributed a lot to GitHub. He was living off credit card debt when he received an email offering an interview opportunity as a programmer at a San Francisco startup called Gild.

Luca Bonmassar, co-founder and chief executive at Gild, had discovered Jade through Gild’s proprietary software called Gild Source. Gild Source evaluates code contributed to various open source platforms and developer communities — such as GitHub, Bitbucket, Google Code, LinkedIn, Twitter, Stack Overflow, and Facebook – looking for the right talent. Gild says that it goes “where developers hang out” – where they interact and display their code and knowledge — and scores millions of developers to offer recruiters deeper insight into a candidate’s potential for a position. Gild Source provides access to over 6 million developer profiles. In addition, Gild gathers each candidate’s social media activity to help companies determine culture fit.

When Luca and his team ran a search for a Rails programmer using Gild Source, Jade was at the top of the list. He had no college education or work experience, but Gild Source gave him a phenomenal score based on his work on GitHub. He had built a solid reputation on GitHub, and his code for Jekyll-Bootstrap had been reused by over 1,000 developers. His code displayed expertise in Rails and JavaScript. His blog postings and tweets were opinionated, which was something the company wanted. Luca and the other developers on the team were impressed.

The story says that Jade wore a vibrant green hoodie to the interview. The interview went well, some pointed questions were asked and answered, and the company offered him a job on the spot. He accepted a position with an annual salary of around $115,000. Imagine a guy with no college degree and no professional background getting a job at a hot Silicon Valley startup!