Hiring Juniors: (not= "Past Experience" "Future Success") - Marla Brizel

Marla Brizel discusses strategies for hiring and mentoring junior developers to grow engineering teams and the Clojure community.

Thanks in part to the recent proliferation of code schools, there’s no shortage of promising new Ruby and JavaScript engineers; however, you’d be harder-pressed to meet someone whose first language is Clojure. How can we, as Clojurists, successfully tap into the junior developer pool to grow our teams and the Clojure community? In this talk, we’ll explore both the “how” and the “why” of hiring juniors and making them successful. Attendees will come away with an understanding of how to vet candidates, concrete strategies for both technical and emotional mentorship, and a deeper sense of why this crop of new talent is exactly what they seek to grow their teams. Marla grew up in North Carolina a diehard Duke fan before moving to Chicago to earn a BA in political science at Northwestern University. She eventually made her way to Colorado to escape the Chicago winter and along the way discovered a love for programming. Before becoming a software developer, she held jobs in the financial and utility industries, as well as in constituent services for a U.S. Senator. Marla is dedicated to the Denver startup community and can often be found speaking at local events and mentoring other aspiring developers. When she’s not working, Marla is usually far away from her computer; skiing, trail running, searching for a perfect cup of coffee, or making friends with random dogs.