Hired Launches in Chicago with over 5000 Applicants and 125 Companies

Chicago, a city known for its diversity of industry is now a hotbed for booming tech. While the Windy City has always been well known as a major world financial center, a hub for manufacturing, and home to three huge Dow 30 companies (Boeing, Kraft Foods, and McDonalds), it has recently made its mark in tech, raising $1.6+ billion in capital in 2014 alone.  The rising number of entrepreneurs from major universities combined with VC funding and a plethora of incubators make Chicago a haven for a growing tech community.

During our 5 month beta period, we saw over 5000 engineers and over 125 companies sign up for the platform. We facilitated introductions between hundreds of engineers and growing companies in Chicago, including Braintree, Grubhub, Trunk Club, and WyzAnt.

Why Chicago?

• Existing traction
  • Chicago tech startup investment and exits surged in 2014 — the city’s highest totals ever. In total, 155 digital tech companies raised $1.6 billion in capital, and 34 companies exited for more than $7 billion.
  • Chicago ranks among the top economies in the world in terms of both size and diversity, with more than 4 million workers generating $500 billion annually.
• Top talent
  • Chicago has one of the most highly-educated talent pools, of which 76% attain bachelor’s degrees, and 36% master’s — a rate 3x the national average.
  • The Chicago metropolitan area has the third largest science and engineering workforce of any metropolitan area in the nation.
• High growth
  • In 2013, Chicago mayor and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel promised to double the city’s tech sector, rolling out several initiatives to add 40,000 technology jobs in the next 10 years.
  • Chicago ranked second highest in number of fast-growth companies (95 to be exact) on the 2014 Inc. 5000.

If you’re a growing company in Chicago looking for talented developers, product managers, data scientists and designers — sign up here.

Know someone who would be a great fit for Hired? You can invite them to sign up here and we’ll send you $5,000 if they accept a job through our Chicago marketplace.