JDP on tour in San Francisco
“For now, one particular recruitment firm runs the city.”
This infamous trip to San Francisco was supposed to happen over a year ago, but Ciaran decided to snap his knee playing indoor soccer, so that put a hold on things until last week.
Uber excited, we jetted off on a Wednesday morning, from touch down at LAX it was all a cool experience, we picked up our car (convertible mustang) lovely car to drive, and headed west through LA to Beverley Hills with our top down, receiving funny comments from various locals, it was fun, we were feeling good. We headed in Beverly Hills to see if we could spot some stars, the only one’s we saw told us we couldn’t tell anyone about our encounter. So off along the coast line of California we drove, headed to San Francisco.
Our first impressions of what is widely known as the Tech Mecca of the world, was positive. Everything just works, people actively fill things out online, Yelp is tremendous. The locals are friendly, the homeless people however are getting out of control in some parts (especially around Market Square where the Twitter HQ is), now don’t get me wrong they are harmless, however our Uber driver tells us San Francisco’s new mayor is a “nice man” and doesn’t mind them hanging around wherever they feel.
We met with some fabulous recruiters, where we learnt that one particular global recruitment firm runs the city, and then there’s hundreds of smaller recruitment firms. Rarely does anyone, even the large firms don suits, they all dress casually smart, and invest a lot into their client / candidate communities. The standard terms of business are 20% (of total salary package) with a 3 month replacement guarantee, compared to a 16%, 6 month guarantee that Just Digital People work on. However JDP are happy to work to the local terms of business, and will be doing so in the coming weeks as we iron out some fantastic agreements for all, that will see JDP holding some terrific opportunities based out of San Francisco city, if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to work in San Francisco, Just Digital People could be your connection to the Tech Mecca.
Moving along — We also had the pleasure of meeting with some techies, they love it as everyone “just gets it.” How do I mean? Well in agency land, when they appraise a client on a mid sized project and it’s say $300,000 clients don’t even blink, they sign it off. People understand the importance of Digital, they get that good design rules everything, and clever functionality, coupled with powerfully smart marketing is a must or else.
That was around SoMo (South of Market) this is where all the San Francisco city based companies operate to the world.
Now as for ‘the valley’ itself, Silicon Valley I’m talking about. We took a trip down to Cupertino, Palo Alto & Mountain View on a Saturday, which turned out to be a not so smart idea, as it was a ghost town, except for the security guards around Linkedin & Google, who wouldn’t allow us on the Google bikes as someone had fallen off one and attempted to sue Google, go figure. Facebook on the other hand was cool, we wondered right around the old university campus that Facebook turned into it’s Global HQ. Impressive digs indeed! What’s more the devs and coffee hands we met, seemed super friendly letting us in on lots about the daily lives the employee’s enjoy. Theatre’s a choice of restaurants, are only a few of the extra’s for you when you go to work at Facebook.
PS. Uber was awesome, anywhere we were, it was only 3 finger taps away from a ‘ballin’ big black SUV rocking up to glide us along to our next destination.
Thank you for reading and especially thank you to our clients & candidates that made this trip possible. The next big event on the JDP calendar is the huge FREE beer up event that is the envy of all the other Digital Recruitment companies around Brisbane! June 26th, at a secret location, it’s all going to happen! Follow #BiBsBNE on instagram for more here.
PPS. and yes we met some fantastic American’s who’ll be our friends forever. All in all great trip, well worth it. New JDP San Francisco office coming soon.
