In addition to QA Engineers, we are looking for an Engineering Manager who is passionate about building teams around individuals who want to develop great, cross-platform software that gets used and embraced by customers.

And finally we are always looking for Software Developers for our Core and Conference Center teams. Check out the deets below! If you or anyone you know is interested in learning more please contact me directly at Catherine.harrison@readytalk.com OR my colleague Katie Green at katie.green@readytalk.com.

Beside focusing on finding the top talent RT Recruiting has had a very busy week within the community. Tuesday night we helped sponsor the Denver Java Users Group holiday party with a couple of our Software Engineers…. On Wednesday, we headed over to East High School  here in Denver to help prepare high school seniors with job interview techniques and resume tips. We learned about this awesome opportunity through Goodwill Denver. You can learn about other volunteer opportunities @GoodwillDenver. And on Thursday, we headed up to CU Boulder and delivered hot pizzas to the Computer Science lab where students were cramming for finals. The pizza was gone within 2 minutes of setting it down! It was awesome. I forgot how much college kids LOVE pizza…AND free food. Check out Katie getting ready for Finals with the rest of the CU Students…

I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful Holiday Season and we will see you in January!

Alan Deger has been hired as an Application Infrastructure Engineer and comes to us from EBSCO Publishing where he was a Sr. Systems Engineer.  Alan brings over 20 years of experience in Information Technology and System Administration.  In his free time, he enjoys mountaineering, skiing, triathlons and even plays a little piano and guitar!

Eric Baer has been hired as a Software Developer on the Conference Center team.  Eric graduated from the CU-Boulder in 2010 and has been working as a Software Engineer with Comcast in Philadelphia.  Prior to Comcast Eric spent time working at the National Centerfor Atmospheric Research working on website and UX design.  In his free time, he enjoys traveling, cycling and climbing.

Will Sarka joined ReadyTalk as a Software QA Engineer.  Will comes to ReadyTalk with 13 years of experience in IT including 6 of those years as a QA Engineer.  He spent the last few years at TranZapp Inc. and Jabber as a QA Engineer.  In his free time, Will enjoys going to concerts, brewing beer and attending the occasional gymnastics class his local gym!

Jordan Baucke has joined ReadyTalk as a contract Salesforce Developer. Jordan graduated from CU-Boulder in 2010 and has been working with Bracket Labs in Boulder. Jordanwill be working on ReadyTalk for Salesforce.

ReadyTalk is still looking to add talented engineers to the team!  For more information please email katie.green@readytalk.com or Catherine.harrison@readytalk.com

Today’s post is contributed by Nario Young, who works in the accounting and HR department at ReadyTalk.

ReadyTalk is a company that has built a culture that is warm and welcoming to new employees. We care about employees and want them to fit in right from the beginning.

But for new employees, it can be a  challenging task to learn the names and faces of existing employees. And, because ReadyTalk is growing so quickly, it can be hard for old timers to get to know new employees.

We needed an organizational chart so  we can familiarize with names and faces as we walk by each time.

So we did it, we mapped out all employees and sorted by departments. We cut and pasted and made a few big posters. We planned to add new employees and make major updates every quarter.

It is totally wrong!  As our business is growing rapidly, we had to add lots of people, move people to other departments and take a couple of people off. The chart got messy. We said good bye to the old chart and switched to a magnetic whiteboard. Each employee has his/her own magnet and the departments are color coated. It allows me to easily add new employees and shift things around.

Now, we just have to keep employees from moving pieces.

How does your company keep it’s organizational chart and help people learn names and faces?

After contributing to the blog for a couple of weeks we realized that we never fully explained the importance of what we do and why we do it. First off, as many of you know the Denver market has become a very competitive place to find the TOP engineering talent. What we have learned is that for the most part, the best employees are already employed. It is our job to first find the top talent, and then share with them what we have going on in the engineering cave here at ReadyTalk. Our job is to make sure that as many people as possible realize what an awesome place this is to work, and the opportunities that await them when they get here…20% time and Labs, Nerd Book Club, Shame Donuts/Fame Donuts, Scotchtoberfest, Friday afternoon Open Arena competitions, beer brewing, Guitar Club, afternoon jogs, office planks, Moscow Mules …and much, much more!

As soon as we catch a candidate’s attention, it is our job to get them in the door. Working for ReadyTalk has made our jobs VERY easy…typically speaking, once they are in the door they are hooked. They want to know how they can get their picture on Famedonuts.com OR be the next winner of the Evil Genius award that is handed out at the end of Labs.

If YOU are interested in learning more about ReadyTalk Engineering please contact me directly at Catherine.harrison@readytalk.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @RTRecruiting to get the inside scoop on what is going on in engineering, along with the most recent job opportunities. We look forward to hearing from you!

Catherine Harrison is part of the ReadyTalk Recruiting Team. (AKA the Beaphins) She has been seeking out the top talent in the industry for 5 years now. Finding the geekiest engineers in the industry to join the ReadyTalk team is her top priority. When she is not on the prowl for Geeks you can find her hiking, rafting, snowboarding, and camping…anything outside!

Come and join us on Wednesday, Oct 5 for the CU Boulder Career Fair. We are currently looking for talent to join our Intern team for the summer of 2012.  From the very first week, our interns will be working on their own Scrum team. They will be given a product idea, some foundation code to build on, a couple of very involved product owners, a dedicated scrum master, a mentor team to provide technical guidance and a lot of freedom. They will get the opportunity to present their final product to the whole team their last week on the job. This year’s interns will have a lot to live up to from our interns of 2011, where the team exceeded all expectations.

In addition to Interns, we are currently looking to hire full time on our Client and Server side for both Software Engineers and Quality Assurance Engineers. Check out our careers page  for details.

Along with our ReadyTalk Recruiting Blog you can also follow us on Twitter @RTRecruiting. You can constantly track our progress in memorizing Pi…which we have not made a lot of progress on over the last few weeks. Please see our inspiration to learning Pi in the picture below! Best T-shirt ever…

Josh Warner – Software Engineer shows off his Pi T-shirt while doing a pull-up

Katie Green is part of the ReadTalk Recruiting Team (AKA the Beaphins)  She has been in the recruiting industry for 10 years and has developed a strong interest in technology and technical recruitment. When she isn’t searching for technical talent for ReadyTalk you might find her at the tennis court, playing volleyball or learning a new song on guitar!

Last week we traveled to the Colorado School of Mines and Colorado State University to meet students, answer questions and arrange future ReadyTalk internships and careers! We spoke with many talented students who bring a fresh technical perspective and enthusiasm about their futures in technology. They have ideas on new mobile apps, and video games (not just playing them, but actually building them) and many just seem to want to find ways to help enhance other’s lives.

The Colorado School of Mines is ranked one of the top engineering schools in the country and we are lucky enough to have several Colorado School of Mines graduates here at ReadyTalk including: Seth Goings, Michael Keesey, Mark Godwin, David Clements and Josh Warner just to name a few…A couple of them joined us at the Colorado School of Mines Career Fair to scope out the top talent. See us in action below…

Mark Godwin, Tux the Linux Penguin, Seth Goings, Michael Keesey (from left)

Seth Goings, Katie Green, Michael Keesey, Mark Godwin (from left) Tux the Linux Penguin (front row)

From Top Left to Right Tux – the Linux penguin, Katie Green, Catherine Harrison, Seth Goings, Michael Keesey, Mark Godwin

Colorado State University offered one of the first engineering programs in the state of Colorado! They even offer a program called International Engineering which is a dual degree program involving liberal arts and engineering courses.  Students are encouraged to participate in programs such as Engineers Without Borders where students work on international service projects.  ReadyTalk also has a few CSU graduates including: Mike Jenson, Jessica Liss and Brandt Abbott.  ReadyTalk engineer’s Mike Jensen, Chris Weaver and Christopher Lamey helped recruit students at this years CSU Career Fair.

Mike Jenson poses at the ReadyTalk booth!

Chris Weaver and Catherine Harrison recruiting students at CSU career fair.

In addition to attending Mines and CSU, we have been incredibly busy back in the office seeking the top Software Engineering talent out there. We are currently looking for Client Software Engineers, Server Software Engineers, Software QA Engineers and  Web Application Engineers.  Please contact katie.green@readytalk.com or catherine.harrison@readytalk.com if you are interested in learning more.

On a final note, we have now memorized 11 numbers of Pi.  In addition we have been studying up on the Fibonacci Sequence.  Some of you may not know this, but it was invented before electricity!

Katie Green is part of the ReadTalk Recruiting Team (AKA the Beaphins)  She has been in the recruiting industry for 10 years and has developed a strong interest in technology and technical recruitment. When she isn’t searching for technical talent for ReadyTalk you might find her at the tennis court, playing volleyball or learning a new song on guitar!

It’s no secret that finding top technical talent in the Denver market is competitive; the Denver Post published an article back in February 2011 that headlined “Colorado Companies Struggle to find Software Developers.”  ReadyTalk has made the effort to face this competition head on by hiring us, Katie Green and Catherine Harrison! We focus specifically on finding the top technical talent by scaling the pages of the internet and hitting the Denver tech scene. We search for the geekiest, smartest and most passionate Software Developers Denver has to offer.

Together we have a total of 15 years recruiting experience including one year each as Technical Sourcers with Google.  As Technical Recruiters with ReadyTalk we proactively search and reach out to Software Developers in the Denver area that might have what it takes to join the ReadyTalk Engineering Team. We know we represent a fantastic company and an excellent product which makes our job fun and rewarding.  We also have the added advantage of learning something new each and every day from our candidates and our engineering colleagues.  We most recently decided to start learning more numbers to Pi in an effort to “fit in” after noticing one of our engineering co-workers was wearing a T-shirt that said “Approximation Is For Wimps”.   Feel free to check in to find out how we are doing.

Learn more about ReadyTalk’s engineering culture or check out our current openings.

Well, my summer internship in the marketing department at ReadyTalk is winding down, and I thought I would share a few thoughts on my experiences before I leave to start school.

Unfortunately, I feel like I will never appreciate my job in the future because I’ve been so spoiled by my time here. No dress code, flexible schedules, runs at lunchtime, a kitchen with a drawer filled with chocolate… I won’t be holding out for this anywhere else. However, besides giving me unrealistically high expectations, this company’s culture has made me an admirer of its management. The company thrives off of relationships with its customers, and I think this is only really possible at a company where its employees are authentically happy to be there. I know this sounds like a marketing gimmick, but I’m absolutely sincere, and I think that it’s great that they’ve found a niche where they can take advantage of a win-win situation like this.

I got to work on a bunch of different types of projects this summer and I think I worked on something with everyone in the department, which was cool because I got to see a wide variety of different roles people play in marketing. I doubt I can remember everything I did, but some things are: Updating ReadyTalk’s Wiki, cleaning up trash in a park in downtown Denver, researching the healthcare market, analyzing demographics on webinar attendees, doing competitive analysis on webinar series, rebranding PowerPoint slides for a company that resells our product, packing in random order 5000 coffee sleeves, folding boxes and sending out packages full of ReadyTalk swag, helping analyze ReadyTalk’s compliance with government contracts, updating ReadyTalk’s marketing collateral (Whitepapers, testimonials, and case studies), and setting up a YouTube channel for ReadyTalk.

I also got to help out on ReadyTalk’s new recruitment video (see it on YouTube) although most of the credit for that project ought to go to my fellow intern Kelly King. Never once did I make anyone coffee, which makes me worry that I may have missed out on the “full internship experience.” We also got to spend one afternoon at a Rockies game (the stadium is only a few blocks from our office.)

I think my biggest regret about my summer is that I never brought my dog to work. I would have had to drive down here instead of taking the bus, and he would have gone completely insane all day, but so many people do it here that it seems kind of shameful that I never once brought him in.

While I probably won’t miss the bus ride to work, the building that ReadyTalk’s office is in is really cool. Although it’s probably not actually this old, the worn brick walls and weird metal pipes and rivets on the walls make me think of 19th century prospectors or something like that. There’s also a really nice bookstore downstairs. The main downside of the building that the elevator frequently breaks down and traps people or the elevator door almost crushes someone, but fortunately I managed to evade this over the course of the summer. By this metric, as well as all of the interesting stuff I did and great people I got to work with, this summer was a success and I really appreciate having had the opportunity to work here.

Thanks to Taylor for all his hard work this summer. We wish him the best of luck at the University of Colorado and will let him bring his dog by the office any time.

ReadyTalk interns hard at work.

In his recent blog post, Andrew Hudson talked about the how ReadyTalk and other top companies share amazing company cultures:

As important is that employers who truly have developed a beloved corporate culture enjoy greater productivity from employees that really do believe in and love their jobs. These companies recognize that their bottom line is intricately connected to a corporate environment that recognizes and rewards the best in their employees.

So, what is the ReadyTalk culture?

At the core, ReadyTalk’s culture is based on a passion for doing the right thing for customers. ReadyTalk’s founders recognized, from the beginning, that happy, engaged employees lead to happy and engaged customers.

Employee engagement at ReadyTalk comes in all forms. There are employee committees that foster philanthropy (see ReadyTalk Supports Local Non-Profits Through Employee Committee), sustainability, and employee well being. There’s a monthly product brainstorming happy hour that provides an opportunity for all employees to share ideas. The CEO leads a bi-monthly session on creative thinking to foster innovation.

ReadyTalk also offers an amazing benefit package that includes 100 percent employer-paid healthcare for employees and their families. There’s 401(k) matching, gym memberships and more. There’s also a whole bunch on non-traditional benefits like bringing your dog to work, weekly access to a massage therapist, paid volunteer time and fully stocked fridges.

For me, the thing that really makes ReadyTalk a Best Company to Work for is the team of passionate people that work here. Everyone is passionate about the company and helping our customers be successful with their audio and web conferencing. Not only that, ReadyTalk employees are passionate about hiking, biking, parenting, playing with their dogs, running, hitting the slopes, brewing beer, blogging, and more. It’s passion that’s infectious.

We’re always looking for other passionate people to join our team. Check out the openings.

I’d love to hear what makes your company a good place to work? What would make it better?

Once you’ve started producing your podcasts, you’ll need to “Publish” them so they’re available for listening. Publishing consists of three main steps:

1. Host: Your podcasts need to be available for downloading via the Internet. You can either host them on your own website or use a podcast hosting service.
2. Feed: Set up an RSS feed so that everyone who subscribes to your feed will automatically receive new podcasts as you make them available. The easiest way to set up a feed is through a service provider.
3. Read: Your listeners will need a podcast reader (iTunes, for example) to subscribe to your feed and download the podcasts. They’ll also need a media player (RealPlayer or an iPod, for example) to listen to the podcasts.

Of course, publishing your podcasts doesn’t do any good unless your audience knows about them. “Promote” your podcasts by advertising them through your company’s website, blog, emails, department meetings, client meetings, direct mailers, etc. Explain what the podcasts are about and how your audience will benefit from them. Many potential listeners may be new to podcasting, so give them instructions for subscribing and listening to your podcasts.

To keep your audience listening, you need to continually “Perfect” your podcasts. The best way is to talk to your audience and get their feedback. First, you’ll need to find out who’s listening. Track downloads of your podcasts for statistics on traffic and subscriptions. Use the same communication channels for promoting your podcasts to solicit feedback on who’s listening. Once you know who’s listening, ask them what they like and don’t like about your podcasts and get their ideas for making them better. Encourage a conversation among your audience by setting up a blog or online forum to facilitate a dialog around your podcasts. You may get more out of it than just ideas for making your podcasts better.

In this series of blogs, I’ve covered 8 “Ps” in podcasting: the Popularity, Pros, and Possibilities of podcasting and ideas for Planning, Producing, Publishing, Promoting, and Perfecting your podcasts. The final “Point” (sorry, I couldn’t resist one last “P”) is that ReadyTalk provides a turnkey podcasting solution with everything you need to create and publish your podcasts. It’s easy to use and comes standard with every ReadyTalk account – the perfect solution for beginners.

So give podcasting a try. It’ll be good for you.

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