How would you like to recruit Stanford students?

We use Meebo as a company to keep in contact with each other and also for our support (you can always get us on our contact page!). Everytime you login to Meebo, their blog appears for you to peruse. The actual blog is here.

Meebo has been fortunate to raise a lot of money from very well known VC’s like Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson to fund their business which allows users to chat through an internet portal rather than through an application which can be easily blocked by network admins. Basically, I can login to Meebo and have our HireVue Support Chat and my personal intercompany chats (I’m not much of a IMer) all in one place without some clunky app bogging down my computer.

Well, being in Silicon Valley you need to recruit right? There is constantly heated competition for talent so how to do you attract talent when you are up against Google, EA (who gives you cheap video games!), Oracle and many others? You appeal to the inner game geek/rockstar in each one of us:

Here is a posting from Meebo -

When Elaine first saw Guitar Hero, her eyes lit up and she became an overnight addict. She got the game over the holiday and when she came back from her break, the side of her first finger was totally numb. Many of us at meebo have enjoyed hours of continuous PlayStation2 playing of the popular game “Guitar Hero” (one and two!) and we wanted to help spread the fun.

meebo’s hosting its very own Guitar Hero night (we’ll supply the guitars) at the Stanford Coffee House (CoHo) this Thursday (Feb 8th) at 7pm on Stanford Campus (Tressider). Danny and Erich (our newest intern) plastered campus with 200 fliers so we’re hoping for a decent turn-out. We’ll be providing lots of food and prizes for participants, and we’d love to see you there (with resumes in hand =p).

The whole team will be there so come on down!

cheers!
sandy

You can see a few things from this:

1) They are trying to position themselves as the cool, hip, alter-company compared to the stodgy old-timers of Silicon Valley

2) They are employing a very cost effective (~$500) way to put on a career fair in the middle of their target group of employees – (read: no recruiters, no fees etc)

3) They will succeed – they aren’t wasting their time with job ads, they are getting the founders out in the nitty gritty where candidates are disarmed, relaxed, enjoying themselves, socializing with people and I’m sure the candidates are open to discussions with the founders and maybe a value pitch or two

Talk about Great Recruiting!

I believe this will work out for Meebo. They have raised a lot of $$ and have received a lot of flack from many bloggers and writers as another Web 2.0 hype. If they play their cards right though, there is a great opportunity for future employees – think about it – I spend 8-10 hours per day on Meebo because of our support chat, the site has my eyes for 480-600 minutes per day when usually a site has my attention for 1. I wouldn’t mind ads, news, etc in that window that I would even go so far as customizing by giving them my demographics, interests etc. Would I be willing to watch ads for movies etc? Sure! I personally think Meebo is a gold mine! (Maybe they’ll send me a Meebo t-shirt)

If I wasn’t in my own company, Meebo would sure be an opportunity! I recommend them to anyone.

–Mark