Friday, July 15, 2011

Scopely Dangles $11K, Bacon, Beer For Recruits

Los Angeles-based Scopely, the stealth-mode startup which announced a funding round this week, has a unique pitch to potential employees: the firm is offering up $11,000 wrapped in Bacon, an oil painting of the new employee, Cuban cigars, a year's supply of beer, and more prizes to new employees or people who refer friends to work at the startup. In the tongue-in-cheek recruiting effort--which it says is aimed at hiring the Most Interesting Engineers In The World--is a takeoff of the Dos Equis' beer advertisement campaign. Scopely is headed by Eytan Elbaz, one of the co-founders of Applied Semantics, the firm which eventually became Google AdSense. Scopely's campaign looks to be one of the more unique ways to attract possible employees to local startups, which have been aggressively recruiting employees, particularly for technical employees. Difficulty finding the right employees, plus stiff competition from big, brand name Silicon Valley firms, are a couple of the challenges local startup CEOs have faced in recent years.

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