usv.com/jobs

Of all the things we have done at USV this year so far, the thing I am most proud of is the work of Gary Chou on our USV Jobs page. Gary wrote a bunch of code that hits the Indeed jobs service (Indeed is a USV portfolio company) and finds all the open jobs across our entire portfolio. The code then parses through the jobs, finds out where the jobs are, what kind of job it is, what the job title is, etc. And then all of the jobs are published and sorted on usv.com/jobs.

Right now, 24 of our 32 active portfolio companies are hiring. There are 557 jobs open across 27 cities and several continents. I am proud of Gary's work on this service and I am proud that our firm is helping to facilitate that kind of job creation activity.

All of us at USV constantly get emails from people who want to work in our portfolio. We love getting these emails because our companies are always in search of great talent to hire. Often these emails come via an introduction from a trusted relationship. And often they come in unsolicited. But they almost always come without much context. So it requires a fair bit of work to take that initial email and turn it into a good lead for our portfolio companies.

Our hope is that usv.com/jobs can change that. If you want to work in a USV portfolio company or if you have a friend or contact that wants to do that, a visit to usv.com/jobs before you send the email can help a lot. There's a big difference between an email that says "I'd like to work in one of your portfolio companies" and one that says "WorkMarket is looking for a QA Engineer and I know of a really good one I'd like to intro you to."

We are all hoping that usv.com/jobs will result in a lot more of the latter and a bit less of the former. And if you know of a great QA Engineer in the NYC market, please send me an email.

#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. William Mougayar

    That’s a great way to show the power of aggregate data, focused on a single purpose. If there was a usv.com/news, covering all the news about the USV companies, it would look like this: http://portal.eqentia.com/usvFor e.g. I just found out that “Union Square Ventures Is The Top VC In The World” based on IRR performance. Congratulations!

    1. fredwilson

      classic business insider headline/postthere is no “top VC in the world”total bullshit

      1. William Mougayar

        True- the title is sensationalized, but isn’t the IRR performance rank valid, based on Preqin data?

        1. fredwilson

          yes it is. as of right now, for that vintage, we have the top fund. so what? does that mean we are the “top VC in the world?”hell no

          1. john haden

            Love the humble-ness!

          2. maxniederhofer

            humilityP.S. sorry, I have a compulsive-ness gene in this area.

          3. derrinyet

            Your commenters will pool together and get you a “Top VC in the World!” t-shirt. I’m sure it will inspire confidence in potential future investments!And, let me know if you’re ever visiting Indeed in Austin and I’ll hand-deliver the shirt. (I work right across the adjacent building.)

          4. John Rorick

            On the front – USV logoOn the back – “I seed funded all of these great companies and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”

    2. JLM

      Most impressive.

    3. Donna Brewington White

      Nice.

  2. BradDorchinecz

    557 job openings across the portfolio? Wow! Washington should be paying more attention to the stimulative effects of the venture industry instead of bickering about whether budget cuts will in fact create jobs.

    1. Brad

      Agreed, I was going to write the same thing. Maybe everyone should forget about Washington and realize the only way to create jobs is to actually do something instead of waiting for a bunch of self righteous suits. Most of whom have never had to worry about a P&L, where their next paycheck was coming from or what to do if they lost their largest customer.

      1. fredwilson

        well it is the entrepreneurs who create jobswe just provide the capital and other forms of supportthat’s why i said “helping to facilitate”

        1. Brad

          I certainly hope you did not think I was referring to you as a “bunch of suits”. I was referring to the politicians. Entrepreneurs and investors are the building blocks of our economy.

          1. fredwilson

            I didn’t take it that way. But I think entrepreneurs should get the credit

          2. Donna Brewington White

            Entrepreneurs are the heroes of the new economy.Come to think of it, of the old economy too.

      2. Donna Brewington White

        I think that running a business, even a small one, should be prerequisite for any government job with responsibility for determining how large sums of money are spent.

        1. Brad

          You are so speaking my language.

        2. JLM

          What kind of trouble maker are you — suggesting that folks should have experience, actual experience, when spending taxpayer money?

          1. ShanaC

            Of course she is a troublemaker, that is what makes her fun to talk to!

          2. Donna Brewington White

            😉

    2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

      STARTUPS NOT HIRE DUMB USELESS PEOPLE. MOST VOTERS DUMB, USELESS. #WHYCONGRESSHATESSTARTUPS

      1. DGentry

        Also, startups don’t pay campaign contributions. VCs might, but not enough to move the needle.

        1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

          CONGRESSPERSON LIKE THIS HEADLINE: “FORD PLANT MAKE 5,000 NEW JOBS”.NOT THIS HEADLINE: “CAR STARTUP MAKES 300 NEW JOBS, BANKRUPTS FORD PLANT, 10,000 PEOPLE LAID OFF WITH NO HOPE OF EVER GETTING A NEW JOB.”IT PRETTY SIMPLE POLITICAL MATH.

          1. Guest

            With all due respect it is not just political math. I appreciate the background note about startups not getting attention but having an economy that just lost 10,000 jobs and added 300 is a shock to the system. if there are plans in place to get the 10K back into the workforce quickly great – no problem. But your comment states “with no hope of ever getting job.” That is something politicians should pay attention to … in fact, we all should.

          2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            GRIMLOCK AGREE.SHARE PLAN TO TURN 40 YEAR OLD SERVICE AND MANUFACTURING SECTOR WORKERS INTO GENIUS DEVELOPERS PLEASE.EDIT:ME CLARIFY FOR HUMANS WITH BRAINS MORE TINY THAN GRIMLOCK.JOB OF INVENTOR AM TO TAKE AWAY OTHER PEOPLE’S JOBS. PRINTING PRESS, COTTON MILL, PHOTOSHOP, THEM ALL DO THIS.INVENTION ALSO MAKE NEW JOBS, BUT NOT AS MANY AS GO AWAY, NEW JOBS NEED NEW SKILLS JOBLESS PEOPLE NOT HAVE.SOFTWARE STARTUPS DO THIS FASTER THAN EVER. IT BIG SOCIAL ISSUE NO ONE ADDRESS, BECAUSE NO ONE HAVE GOOD ANSWER.(GRIMLOCK THINK EVERYONE GO BACK TO WORK ON SMALL FARMS. FEED SELVES, DIVERSIFY FOOD SUPPLY, MORE HEALTHY, NATURAL FOOD FOR EVERYONE THAT NOT WRECK PLANET)

          3. Guest

            LOL Grimlock – are you self-obsessed you think the world only needs developers? Really? And we can all wear the same clothing and eat the same food too I suppose?

          4. Guest

            Grimlock, I totally agree:”IT BIG SOCIAL ISSUE NO ONE ADDRESS, BECAUSE NO ONE HAVE GOOD ANSWER.”However, my point and comment was about how this thread started off with a more cynical tone about politicians. Now I am as cynical as the next person but I don’t think that politicians being more interested in 10K layoffs versus 300 new jobs created (as in your example above) is just political grandstanding…at least not always. :)Some politicians have legitimate concerns about this fact (and the very nature of innovation as you describe it). Sure some might be looking for political points but not all of them and not always. Some may be trying (in some cases desperately) to hatch some type of plan.In regards to your innovation comment. Yes, innovation causes displacement. This displacement creates additional “costs” to the system that, unfortunately, many do not account for until its too late. Tech progress (any progress really) can create employment displacement. This displacement creates costs that can be manifested in potential lower economic output in the short run (e.g. fewer workers producing until new tech comes into full production); unemployment benefits to those impacted; and/or additional costs such as re-training/re-tasking of employee skill sets.Few people want to talk about these costs until they are real; as long as they remain hidden no one discusses. I remain hopeful that business leaders will begin to take into account longer term (e.g. economic) costs into their business models (e.g. military costs that show up on the government’s financials not private enterprise to protect oil interests, environmental impact costs for manufacturing and raw materials producers, etc.). The accounting rules seem to help hide these type of costs until they become more “real.” But they are already real, society just doesn’t know when they will happen. Furthermore, the discussion often gets more cloudy because of the way we treat these costs when they do happen. Lower oil benefits consumers and the private enterprise model but we seem to end up throwing the longer term costs of onto the books of the government. Then so many want to fight about growing government, wasteful spending, etc. (Sorry for the meandering…I just finished off some pancakes for breakfast and might be on a maple syrup sugar high.)And why do I think about these type of things? Because you are correct, Software/Tech tend to make these changes happen faster. These longer term societal costs might likely accelerate. And, until a really good plan is formulated, the best any of us can do is bring about these topics in public forums.P.S. I am not sure about the tiny brain comment or where that came from.

  3. Jan Schultink

    Great site.A small bug:When you scroll down the static left column element gets scrambled into the site footer (Chrome on Max OSX)Went all the way down to find the Tel Aviv listings 🙂

    1. fredwilson

      yeah, gary was struggling to make the page work on all browsers. i’ll let him know

    2. Gary Chou

      Thanks! This is why my former teammates (pre-USV) never let me write production code. 🙂

  4. William Mougayar

    The Indeed site says 62,277 new jobs in the past 7 days, while the unemployment rate in the US is still sitting at 8.8% at the last count. This could point to a shortage in technology related skills/supply.But there’s this interesting stat from the BLS http://www.bls.gov/ro2/9490…”In New York City alone, 9,800 jobs were added in computer systems design, accounting, and advertising services.” (in past year)Also, interesting that Washington DC has had the largest increase in jobs among metro areas…Government jobs?

    1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

      GRIMLOCK IN DC. NOT WORK FOR GOVERNMENT. TECH COMPANIES HERE HIRING LIKE CRAZY.IF YOU GOOD CODER, MAYBE ME HIRE YOU. THERE BIG SHORTAGE HERE. EVERYONE GO TO NEW YORK INSTEAD.

  5. awaldstein

    Really useful aggregation. I’ve sent this off to a handful of talented BD and Marketing folks as a nudge.Most interesting at first glance is the relationship between job type and market penetration of the companies.Zynga aside of course with its call for a contract dishwasher in SF ;))Companies like Boxee that need to jump beyond simple buzz as a marketing strategy are looking at core growth tactics through marketing hires, others are looking at community and cust support managers to channel community growth.Of course, this is all conjecture as I only know these companies from the outside and only some as a user. Interesting thought puzzle though.Fred…you should do a post sometime on the first 5 and first 10 hires that you see as the right quotient across a few types of portfolio companies,

    1. fredwilson

      that’s an interesting posti will think about it

      1. Jeremy Levine

        I’d love to read that post.It would be great to hear what hires 1-5 have been for your co’s and any unconventional hires (or at unconventional times) that really worked…

    2. Mark Essel

      Also made a great Quora question that Andy Swan and I answered.

      1. awaldstein

        Thnx Mark. I’ll check it out.For some reason Quora doesn’t satisfy as it should.My filter for any new service is efficient + social + fun.Few things do this but I’ll give Quora another shot.

        1. fredwilson

          i’m not a fan either

        2. Mark Essel

          I haven’t visited Quora recently beyond grabbing that link. Your curiosity reminded me of the question. I’m curious to see Fred’s ideas on core founding teams as well.

          1. awaldstein

            I have friends and clients who consider Quora part of the natural social order. I’m just not feeling it.Core 5pc and core 10pc team should be interesting. Lots of variables. Lots of opinions I’m certain.

  6. RichardF

    is there no Indeed api ?

    1. fredwilson

      Yes. That’s what usv.com/jobs is built on

      1. RichardF

        aha….didn’t see any mention of it on their website but that’s because I was defaulted to the UK website.

  7. Donna Brewington White

    What a coincidence…I just sent you an email yesterday related to this topic.

  8. Nik Souris

    Very nice. when is Gary launching his VCPortfolioJobSpot.com ? I see a small but clear exit sign 🙂

  9. Donna Brewington White

    It excites me to see USV taking this step to support your portfolio companies’ talent acquisition needs. Great work on Gary’s part. (I noted that not only 24 companies and 27 cities are represented, but 9 countries! Impressive.)Understanding how extremely critical this need is during a company’s formative stages, startup hiring has become a bit of an obsession for me…but that’s another story.Due to this obsession, I’ve been observant of some of the developments taking place – for instance: more VCs creating internal recruiting groups, the role of “Talent Partner” at a few firms, Andreessen Horowitz building a “talent CRM” for portfolio companies, to name a few.If there is indeed a War for Talent going on, then someone needs to be thinking about solutions strategically and proactively. Given how critical the need is, it makes sense that VCs would be providing support in this way.

    1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

      EMPLOYER-CENTRIC FIX TO TALENT WAR JUST TAPE ON LEAKY BOAT. NEED TALENT-CENTRIC FIX.REVERSE WHOLE IDEA OF GET JOB. LIKE YOUTUBE TO TV.

      1. fredwilson

        we are also working on the supply sidesee my post this morning

        1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

          HACKATHONS GOOD THING.GRIMLOCK TALKING ABOUT OTHER THING. CHANGE ENTIRE WAY CAREERS AND FIND JOB WORK.COMPANY JUST PEOPLE DOING THINGS TOGETHER IN SAME (MENTAL) PLACE. HUMANS FORGET THIS.PUT FOCUS BACK ON GET HUMANS TOGETHER TO DO WHAT THEM WANT TO DO, NOT PLUG ROUND HUMAN PEG IN SQUARE COMPANY HOLE.MORE LIKE FACEBOOK OR COLOR THAN INDEED.IF IT JUST AS LIKELY CREATE STARTUPS BY BAND HUMANS TOGETHER AS FIND RECRUITS, THEN IT WORKING RIGHT.GRIMLOCK TOO BUSY AT NEW GIG BUILD ON OWN, SOMEONE ELSE NEED DO IT.

          1. Donna Brewington White

            You’re making me a little dizzy but I think there is something to this.

          2. Team Tenzo Drifting

            I believe Mr. Dino is saying that we need to change talent acquisition from the automated systems such as Indeed to human powered systems like Facebook.He is right on the money. Personally, I only look to see if a company is “hiring” via job boards but I don’t bother applying through there. You are initiating an electronic connection, and if your electrons are not “right” (for most qualified seekers they almost never are) then you don’t get a response.So instead of wasting time with machines, I then find out who in my network works there and see if I can actually TALK to somebody first (at least on the phone) before even bothering.Oddly enough this may make the job search process more efficient for both parties involved, and result in better fits and higher retention.If I don’t know ANYONE (even remotely) at the company, I don’t apply. It’s a waste of time and it’s better to focus on maximizing human relationships than rolling the dice on a system with inherently faulty algorithms.Connections are great, but in the end knowledge is power.

          3. Donna Brewington White

            Thanks Endotox. You’ve given me some food for thought and helped to elucidate FG’s point as well.Personally, I approach job boards very warily from both sides of the table. They are a source of information but a very undesirable source for connecting. (I post jobs very warily.) I understand that they are useful but like other technology-based recruiting/hiring tools, the benefactor seems to be the company more so than the applicant.I think that if someone can come up with a way to use technology to enhance the hiring experience for both candidate/applicant and company, well, they are going to be on to something.That’s all I will say for now. 😉

      2. Donna Brewington White

        I agree that disruption might be in order for how we think about “talent acquisition.” (Don’t tell anyone but I actually don’t like the term “talent acquisition.”)This and the comment below have piqued my interest because I think you are onto something. If ever the opportunity arises, would love to pick your micro dinosaur brain on this topic.Also, I’ve said this before and will say again, the real “War for Talent” is in retention, not acquisition, but I realize you have to get ’em before you can keep ’em. It’s just that retention has to be firmly entrenched in the mindset that informs the whole acquisition process.

  10. Gregg Dourgarian

    Although admirable (and smart) to help your portfolio companies recruit, I’m surprised that you’ve gone the route of job aggregation (Indeed etc) when creating direct routes between jobs and talent would work much better.A career site with great job content that integrates with the rest of the brand would make jobs more findable and create a much more approachable online app.Also, drop-off rates on aggregation sites (and this would include JobVite and Equentia) are horrendous, and the best talent simply goes elsewhere.

    1. fredwilson

      Indeed’s performance for employers suggests the opposite. they have built a huge business connecting employers and job seekers

    2. John Rorick

      Echoing Fred’s comment, and as a large corporate business recruiter, Indeed has been climbing the charts in our source mix as a key (free) source for some time now. It’s performance has significantly dented traditional and stale job boards over the past few years.That said, I did not continue with the pay model following a beta as it fell short for me in a “bang for your buck” sense. It did not outperform free in my case. For a small consulting fee I’ll let USV know where Indeed could get over the hump ;)…and adding resumes is not the answer. JMHO

  11. BillMcNeely

    Hello I’m Logistics uses Indeed on our social recruiting site for military vets looking for employment. Our implementation is not near as good. Do you think Gary could share his magic with us?Thanks!

    1. Gary Chou

      Hi Bill, I’ve had a few requests on this, and will put together a blog post on this in the coming future.

  12. paramendra

    Very helpful indeed. I am sure it is widely appreciated.

  13. ShanaC

    I remember seeing this when it first came out. Gary, you did a great job.Maybe he should sell the hack back to Indeed as a way of making their job listings look pretty on other people’s websites 😉

    1. Donna Brewington White

      Good idea. VentureLoop does something along these lines and does it nicely.

    2. Mark Essel

      Yeah Gary’s a talented hacker and generous with his time.He was very helpful last year when I applied to 15 usv startups and thought I was on the chopping block at my day job (systems engineer, still cooking). No resulting interviews, just two phone conversations with non-technical folks, but an interesting experience in humility. It was a great motivator for putting together a fun html5 resume, and to better understand what startups are looking for (not someone w/ my background).Training up for an NYC Google interview later this month. Today’s project is a python implementation of compressed suffix tree search. Later this week is a solid self balancing btree.

  14. Lauren Flanagan

    Hi FredGreat post and congrats on all the jobs and wealth you and USV are creating!One of my portfolio companies, HarQen, has a solution for parsing all those job inquiries you are getting, which also works for unsolicited applications for funding. Basically applicants answer some basic text questions (completely customizable) and if they pass the qualifiers, are given an immediate call for an interview with prerecorded questions. Each of your companies could have different questions, (which are all treated as campaigns so you could potentially have a view into all of them) and they can listen to, review and rank the applicants whenever and wherever it is convenient–advantages of asynchronous interviewing. No hardware or software required, just a link to the HarQen platform from a button on your website.Check out the VCPitch button on our http://www.bellevc.com homepage. It’s an entrepreneur interview, we also have them for our portfolio companies. If you are interested in learning more, let me know and I’ll set up a demo for you and Gary.https://interview.harqen.co…We can also push a short version of this out over SMSText VCPitch to shortcode 90206FYI, HarQen just won the PwC Silvertip Award for Entrepreneurship and Growth. They also won Product of the Year from HR Executivewww.wisconsintechnologycoun…Thanks and I look forward to talking with you and Gary.Best,Lauren————————–Lauren FlanaganManaging DirectorBELLE Capital LP &Phenomenelle Angels Fundwww.phenomenellevc.comwww.bellevc.com—————————-

  15. maxniederhofer

    If anyone ever asks me again about the positive impact of venture-backed companies on the economy, I shall point them to this page. Impressive.

  16. Aruni S. Gunasegaram

    I love that Austin is at the top of the list under each category. It’s nice our city starts with an “A.” :-)We use VentureLoop as a service for our portfolio companies at the Austin Technology Incubator (http://ati.utexas.edu) so when they post their jobs, they get pushed to Indeed and other job search sites.

  17. Sam Birmingham

    Cool aggregation… A tip o’ the hat to GaryNow for the next step: To aggregate candidates, then match them to the jobs!We’ve got the data. We’ve got the networks… But I don’t see anyone who is really shaking up the recruitment industry. And if there is one sector which is ripe for disruption…LinkedIn made it easy for recruiters to build databases, but then most of their filtering is done manually… Why aren’t we doing more of that filtering digitally?

  18. kenberger

    It doesn’t contain any executive or other top-level jobs. There’s a few that are tagged “C-Level”, but they’re not really.I guess top job searches might never be able to be automated.