Draft Day Participants Score Top Tech Talent

WTIA member companies make the most out of Draft Day

Our inaugural Draft Day event was a fantastic success; twelve of the final candidates landed job interviews with top local tech firms, and four others got red shirts—meaning that when a position they’re qualified for opens , they, too, will be offered an interview.

“The unlikely cure for tech’s diversity problem.”
Ashley Stewart, Puget Sound Business Journal

We’re pleased to share that, as of this post, five of our Draft Day candidates have received and accepted job offers from BoldIQ and Base2. The hires include Daniel Browning (St. Martin), Corey Johnson (Green River College), Mikleane Chouinard (CodeFellows), Samantha Prince (CodeFellows), Iris Carrera (CodeFellows). This is proof positive that there are untapped resources for top tech talent in our region. As Code Fellows CEO, Dave Parker stated in this June 30, Puget Sound Business Journal article, “The demand in the market is totally outdoing any traditional school’s ability to produce talent.” “There’s a lag between the skills companies need now and the time it’s going to take to get students going into university now job-ready.”

How Draft Day came to be

In the Fall of 2015, WTIA hosted its first FullConTech event, which brought 300+ people of action from the tech industry, education, government, and the community together to tackle the challenges of sustaining our region’s growth: developing and attracting top talent and nurturing an ecosystem to support rapid growth.

From this event, actionable initiatives were conceived of and made into ‘plays’ that the WTIA would bring to fruition in 2016. Draft Day was one of those events. Read more about its inception here.

WTIA is dedicated to supporting and advocating for diversity in tech. We’ll continue to seek out new and better ways to enrich Washington State’s tech community.