Career Advice
Smarkets: An Employer of Choice in London’s Tech Scene
Glassdoor Team
Glassdoor Team | Author & Career Expert at Glassdoor | 21 Sept 2017
Smarkets is one of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies - the company recently placed 2nd in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 listing - and one that proudly boasts a 4.8 star rating on Glassdoor. Headquartered in London and with offices in Los Angeles and Malta, Smarkets is focused on hiring the best tech talent to further improve its product in order to reach its ambition of becoming one of the world’s top-tier tech companies.
To achieve that goal, the company is adopting innovative approaches to stand out in London’s vibrant tech scene.
To find out more, we talked to Marco Bilello, who heads up communications at Smarkets to discuss how the company is striving to attract the very best talent.
Glassdoor: We saw that Smarkets had started advertising; can you tell us more?
MB: Good spot! We’re currently running a billboard advert across the London Underground which is written in code. We wanted to create something that would turn a few heads and engage directly with coders.
Knowing that dwell time is roughly around three minutes on the tube platforms, we went for a puzzle that coders would pick out among the other ads and be able to solve - either on the platform as they wait for the next tube or during their journey.
It’s not the sort of ad you expect to see on the London Underground and we hope it stands out because it is so different.
What made you choose this approach?
We see ourselves as a technology company and operate a tech-first approach to the business. So it’s no coincidence that one of our main priorities is to invest in attracting the best talent in order to further develop and innovate our event exchange.
The tech sector in the UK and especially London is extremely competitive. We’re competing against some of the biggest tech companies in the world and we see the ad as a way of demonstrating our personality and a vehicle to engage with the tech community.
We truly believe that we offer a fantastic place to work for engineers in a rewarding self-managed organisation and this is reflected in our exceptional Glassdoor ranking.
What results have you seen so far?
We’re only two weeks into the run but we’ve received some really positive feedback from the tech community and have received a number of applications for our vacant roles - some of which have passed our Hacker Rank test and have progressed to interview stage!
We’ll do a full evaluation when the campaign ends in the middle of October but the initial signs are extremely positive and we’re already looking at the evolution of the concept to roll out before the end of this year. Watch this space!
Smarkets has a fantastic Glassdoor ranking. What advice do you have for other tech start-ups?
We’ve always tried to make our Glassdoor page a true representation of Smarkets and a window into what it’s like to work here. Trust is the driving force of our company, with staff empowered to make decisions that have a real business impact. We even let them propose their own salaries!
Our 4.8 rating is testament to the vibrant, collaborative culture we have and we regularly hear from new recruits that it was one of the reasons they chose to work at Smarkets. The Informed candidates we get from Glassdoor are always stronger hires. Because of its pull we’ve actually incorporated Glassdoor and our ratings into our newly-designed company website pages.
Glassdoor Team
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