Summer really isn’t a season in Los Angeles so much as it is a state of mind. Still, as Memorial Day approaches, it can be tough to keep career goals front and center. That said, it’s more than possible to plan that epic Europe trip you’ve been dreaming of and find a new job you’ll love long term.
Planning a big backpacking trip or catching a wave can actually be easier to do than landing a new job. After all, the process is about more than firing off applications and accepting interviews. You need to do deep research, because if you don’t, there’s the real risk that you’ll accept an offer from a company that’s not in growth mode or whose leaders don’t prioritize professional development.
So that you can spend more time dreaming of summer and less time online, we’ve highlighted the most exciting aspects of five Los Angeles tech companies, all of which are hiring now.
What they do: Core Digital Media (CDM) provides tools and content to help people save money on their mortgages.
Inside CDM’s sprints: Core Digital Media is currently hiring a product manager, a role requiring more than two years of work experience with consumer-facing products, Scrum and Agile knowledge, and the ability to lead a product launch from end to end. PMs also need to have experience with design sprints. Rhodel Swaniker, VP of product and strategy, provided some insight into the product team’s sprints in a previous Built In interview.
“We needed to understand exactly how different consumers used technology to manage their money and how people felt about mixing social media with their money management,” Swaniker said. “We conducted a one-week Google design sprint that concluded with rapidly prototyping a product. Consumers tested our prototype and we interviewed them to gather data while looking at secondary industry research to analyze our findings.”
Level up your content career: Are you an experienced content manager looking to take the next step in your career? CDM is hiring a director of content, a role perfectly suited for experienced content pros with strong project management and content distribution skills. This role requires the ability to define goals based around an editorial vision, lead a team of freelance writers and full-timers, and make strategic decisions based on data.
What they do: Medely operates a two-sided marketplace where nurses can find short-term and long-term work opportunities and hospitals can source nursing staff on-demand.
An SVP’s guide to growth: When Jon Foley joined Medely as SVP of SMB sales and account management, one of his first to-do’s was an interview with Built In. In this sitdown, Foley touched on his leadership style with a specific focus on the importance of growth and accountability.
“For my team, I see the role of a leader as someone who doesn’t tell others how or when to grow but lets individuals determine their next step and then provides amazing coaching on how to get from point A to point B in one’s career,” Foley said. As leaders, we should provide our teams the coaching, resources and environment to be wildly successful. But we should also allow people to be empowered and accountable for creating amazing outcomes.”
What draws top talent: Chris Brucia joined Medely as VP of product in August of 2020 after holding product leadership roles at Amazon and Grubhub, as well as a C-suite position at Atom Tickets. Brucia spoke to Built In last fall about what brought him to the healthtech company.
“I was originally attracted to Medely because it is a marketplace business (efficient model) operating in healthcare (traditionally inefficient),” Brucia said. “Medely’s platform aims to solve real challenges for healthcare facilities and nursing professionals. The mission is unchanged since I’ve joined, but the most exciting evolution has been scaling up our product and engineering teams.”
What they do: Spring Labs’ blockchain-based platform is designed to enable companies to securely and privately exchange information, all while protecting consumer data.
Learning in pairs: Spring Labs is hiring a senior development engineer in test and a senior DevOps engineer. Details about both roles can be found in the job descriptions. But what you won’t read is how the company supports engineers when they’re struggling to grasp a concept. Fortunately, Faris Habib, a software engineer II, shared his experience with that exact scenario with Built In.
“The company encourages me to pursue interests related to the work I’m doing on my team,” Habib said. “They’re also never shy to lend a hand or start a pair programming session to help me understand a complex concept. I love how I’m supported to pursue interests that don’t directly relate to my job description.”
Don’t sweat the moving costs: Like many in tech, Spring Labs offers some of its roles remotely. For those roles that are not available to remote workers, the company offers a generous relocation assistance package worth up to $5,000. Once relocated, workers can take advantage of a pet-friendly office with a free onsite gym and a fully stocked kitchen.
What they do: Insurance companies and repair shops use CCC’s artificial intelligence, IoT and workflow technology to power the automotive claims process and to help get drivers back on the road.
Take a peek at the test: CCC has 15 openings on its dev team as of this writing, including one for a senior DevOps engineer. When it comes to writing automated tests, Nhat Nguyen, manager of application development, broke down in detail to Built In why CCC prefers C# over all other languages in an interview from September of 2020.
“With its compatibility with Selenium and Appium, C# has become the primary choice for many testers seeking to automate browsers, desktop and mobile applications,” Nguyen said. “Supported test frameworks in C# include NUnit, MSTest and xUnit, making integration with test management solutions a breeze. We can execute automated tests written in C# using the supported frameworks from our CI/CD pipelines or directly from the test plan. The test results can then be displayed in various dashboards without any custom code.”
Big on ladders: Building a career ladder is absolutely essential for companies that want to develop and retain top talent. CCC rolled out a revised career ladder in 2019 for its technical team that led to a 40 percent increase in promotions that year. Alex Kewney, director of human resources, shared CCC’s process for building a career ladder in an interview with Built In.
According to Kewney, CCC’s technical career ladder is designed to be easily understandable and contains information on how to move into leadership as well as senior-level opportunities for those who want to remain individual contributors. Kewney also said that in terms of communicating the changes the career ladder creates, managers hand-delivered letters to all 600 members of the tech org detailing each person’s new title, level and position.
What they do: Crexi offers a wide variety of tools to the commercial real estate (CRE) industry. Its marketplace features properties that can be purchased or leased — it operates an auction platform, too — a broker/agent search function and research tools for evaluating properties and markets.
It’s a new record: Bob Drury, senior managing director at Crexi, told Built In recently that auctions are typically seen as a last resort to making a sale in the commercial real estate space. Crexi is working hard to change that with its aptly named “Crexi Auction” platform and took a major step toward legitimizing CRE auctions this past December. Christmas came early for the company when it announced the auction of a property in Las Vegas for $205 million, which set the record for the largest single-asset online real estate transaction in history.
Leading from the trenches: Steve Narish is the senior regional sales director at Crexi for the southwest and south central United States. Narish has been in a leadership role throughout his more than six years at Crexi. He told Built In the company’s sales leaders are all experienced sellers who lead by example. Narish explained how this benefits his team, sharing a story about helping a top seller get her groove back.
“I noticed she wasn’t her normal self and could sense she was a little defeated, so I stepped in to figure out what was going on,” Narish said. “After listening to one of her calls, I was able to identify two areas of improvement — brevity and softening the close. We hopped on the next pitch together and I took the lead to give her a chance to hear a different approach. I checked another call a few days later and it was great to hear how she applied the feedback.”
