Bruce Ge was working at Siebel Systems when it was acquired
at Oracle. A year after the acquisition
he enjoyed the culture and benefits of Oracle but was bored by the work. He looked at his path ahead and decided to
create his own fork in the road. So he
quit Oracle and started his own company, one that would eventually become
Jobs2Careers.
That willingness to change had already served Bruce well in
his life so far. Growing up in China he attended the top engineering school in
the nation, and then came to the United States to attend University of Illinois
at Urbana, one of the top computer science graduate schools in the country.
At first Jobs2Careers was a social job referral program, a
social network like LinkedIn. That iteration didn’t get the traction that was
needed, but by building it Bruce gained a better understanding of the market.
By 2010 Jobs2Careers changed and took shape as a one-stop job search engine.
Jobs2Careers now offers pay-per-application job search
advertising. This, coupled with good integration with their customer’s job sites,
bring peace of mind to employers when allocating dollars for talent
acquisition.
Although outside financing would have helped Jobs2Careers
accelerate their growth more rapidly, there were benefits to bootstrapping.
Being a smaller organization enabled Bruce to move Jobs2Careers multiple times,
finally making the transition from California to Austin.
It also enabled Bruce to focus on the culture of the
company. “My job is to keep my employees happy. They want to change the world
and I want to focus on supporting that drive.”
One way he is accomplishing that is by moving the company to
a brand new office. With bright, sunny offices everyone gets a window. The
conference rooms are named after cities where Jobs2Careers was once based,
reinforcing their history of movement and growth.
The open office also enables employees to learn and coach
from each other. This team collaboration is one of the core values of the
company.
