Natural Selection: Recruiting Tech to Wyo

Brooks Lake above Dubois, Wyoming

“It’s beautiful there, but I can make twice that in ________ (enter major metropolitan city of choice).”

We hear statements like this all the time in Wyoming, where recruiting out of state employees (especially in technology) is a difficult task.

It’s not that people don’t see the beauty, it’s that they think they are worth more.  In most cases, their current corporate  salary has them making enough money to “get by” where they’re at, and the thought of a potential “decrease” has them running for home. It’s become my job to help them see what it’s all about. And to get a true feeling for the life-altering power of life “away from it all.”

This weekend, I was fortunate to give the lay-of-the-land to a potential hire who understands what Wyoming has to offer and seems willing to make the change. We took a drive just about an hour from my house to the towering Pinnacles above Brooks Lake near Dubois, Wyoming. We got out, stretched and snapped a few pics with our cell phone cameras (which he promptly posted to Facebook).  It was completely silent, except for the natural sounds of a brisk breeze and the forest that surrounded us. There were no people [I repeat], there were no people in site as far as we could see. Talk about a head-clearing, thought-provoking place, this was it. And there are plenty of these at the end of every road in Wyoming.

As Pitchengine grows, and we begin to build our team, it’s critical to me that we do it selectively. How do we compete for talented people with the likes of New York City or San Francisco? To me, it’s easy. Most of the work has already been done for us. After all, in Wyoming the artwork isn’t on the wall, but on the horizon.