We just finished up day 1 of the Boulder Startup Job Fair.

We had 14 applicants interview with 15 companies.  The numbers don’t quite match up with the ’20 startups, 100 developers’ oneliner that we aimed for.  In the end we have 17 hiring companies, with 85 applicants flying in and just over 45 local applicants.

Tendril

We gathered at 8:15 where the applicants first met the teams.  A round robin interview style of 30 minute interviews happened with breaks all day, until all the applicants met all of the companies.  All the applicants were taken out to dinner by the companies, building on the relationships from the previous weeks and days.

Boulder.me Dinner

Poker night entertained both the applicants from today, as well as several of the 18 developers interviewing tomorrow.

Exhausting.  But fun.  But Exhausting.

Both the companies and applicants have been impressed with the quality all around.  The companies are serious about hiring for a few positions, and have seriously cool office environments.  The candidates are talented, passionate, and thinking Boulder is the move they need to make.

IMG_7964

A huge thank you to the sponsors of the Boulder Startup Job Fair, without you, it wouldn’t have happened.

Now, on to day 2.

Written by Andrew Hyde

Andrew leads the TEDxBoulder and Ignite Boulder efforts and has worked in startups for six year. He blogs about startups, bootstrapping, events and triathlon at andrewhy.de and you can follow him on twitter here.