Partner Spotlight
Moving on up with ClickUp: How This High-Growth Startup Is Bolstering Its Team with Boot Camp Talent
“Grow 1% every day.”
For San Diego startup ClickUp, this is more than a catchphrase—it’s a lifestyle. Steadily expanding since its founding in 2017, the software company has been soaring in popularity over the last year, entering hyper-growth mode and not only tripling its support team headcount in just three months, but also quintupling the size of its entire staff.
Intent on driving innovation for an ever-growing customer base, ClickUp partnered with 2U as a way of identifying top tech talent in cities across the country. 2U has promoted relevant ClickUp positions on our job board and weekly emails, hosted a recruiting webinar exclusively for ClickUp, and watched students “line up” for ClickUp’s virtual recruiting booth at our first national online career fair. In 2021 alone, ClickUp has hired 11 graduates of 2U-powered boot camps, including three from the same University of Denver (DU) Coding Boot Camp cohort. The energy and excitement doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
One such recent hire is Samantha Peloquin, who landed her role as a technical coach with the help of her DU boot camp career coach. “The support I got was exceptional,” Samantha says. “The boot camp helped me hone my tech skills, allowing me to bring more value to my role, helping users develop an effective workflow inside the ClickUp platform. The culture here is unparalleled, focusing on growth both personally and professionally. And the platform is brilliant.”
Read our Q&A with ClickUp recruiter Shawna Wensel to see how this ambitious startup is changing how people work through its “all-in-one” productivity and project management platform.
There are so many well-educated and intelligent people that come from different backgrounds at ClickUp. If you don’t have a four-year degree, we still want to meet you.— Shawna Wensel, Recruiter at ClickUp
What do you love most about ClickUp?
Our culture! We do a good job of hiring individuals who are driven and want to move up in their career. There are processes to keep us productive and efficient, but we’re always open to improvement so ClickUp employees are encouraged to experiment and be creative. Working in such an entrepreneurial environment is amazing. I’m constantly amazed by what our platform can do, and often find myself saying, “I didn’t know about that feature!” That sense of innovation makes it fun to come to work.
What tech roles are you generally hiring boot camp students for?
Many of these folks start in technical support and customer coaching, which gives them the opportunity to learn all our platform’s capabilities and embrace our customer-centric mission. There will be several opportunities to move into junior-level developer positions. Our support role is fairly technical, so those we’ve hired from boot camps still get to practice the skills they’ve learned such as API testing, web testing, debugging, troubleshooting, and working closely with engineers.
What opportunities come with joining an early-stage startup like ClickUp?
You can make a big impact when working for a smaller, hyper-growth company. At ClickUp, you have the opportunity to get in on the ground floor and drive the company forward. Since we’re a startup, employees can be more creative than they might be at an organization where everything is already figured out and set in stone. There are also many career development opportunities available here. Everyone has their own unique growth path, but ClickUp rewards you for the hard work you put in.
How does passion drive productivity at ClickUp?
Passion is so important to us. If you're working at a company and don't care about what they're doing, you'll probably wind up burnt out. We want to create an environment full of passionate people who really do want to “change the way the world works” with ClickUp. Looking around, it’s clear that our employees love what they do. They are support-minded, enjoy helping people, and love tackling technical challenges toward better solutions.
The support I got [from the University of Denver career coach] was exceptional. The boot camp helped me hone my tech skills, allowing me to bring more value to my role.— Samantha Peloquin, Technical Coach at ClickUp and Boot Camp Graduate
What does ClickUp look for in tech talent?
Technical skills are important, but what matters most is that they’re a great “culture add.” We want employees who are passionate, motivated, detail-oriented, growth-minded, and can quickly pick up new things. That last quality is really important, since we prioritize the ability to learn on the job. Boot camp graduates excel at that, since they already have experience picking up tons of new material in a short time frame. Our technical support manager recently told me, “Our newest batch of boot camp candidates are out-of-this-world.” Everyone’s been impressed.
What advice would you offer boot camp students interested in ClickUp?
Bring energy and excitement—we want to see your passion for ClickUp. If you don't have experience with something, that's okay, as long as you’re eager to learn and grow. We don’t require anyone to have a college degree to launch their career with ClickUp. There are so many well-educated and intelligent people that come from different backgrounds. If you don’t have a four-year degree, we still want to meet you.
What excites you most about ClickUp’s future?
I'm excited about how much the company has grown already, and look forward to watching that continue. Our tech product and engineering teams are so on top of their work, constantly leveling up with new features. I like the mystery of not knowing what's next, but trusting it will be awesome.
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