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"Kickstarter launched in 2009 as a place for musicians, writers, artists, thinkers, and creative engineers to pitch their ideas to the public and ask them to invest. To date, project creators have raised more than $1 billion to fund successful projects, which run the gamut from weirdly innovative (a banana piano) to empowering (GoldieBlox engineering toys for girls). Kickstarter has also become a powerful force in Hollywood. In 2012, 10 percent of the films at Sundance were Kickstarter-funded. In 2013, the Kickstarter-funded film Inocente won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short.  The company launched with five employees in a graffiti-tagged apartment in lower Manhattan. It now has 86 full-time staffers and a new office in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Human resources director Shannon Ferguson explains what it takes to join one of the most creative companies in the world. Despite the rapid growth of Kickstarter, the team is still relatively small. How often do you hire new people?  We&amp;#039;re growing pretty fast, but we&amp;#039;re definitely growing thoughtfully. We have several roles open now, and we get hundreds of applications every day. We interview a lot of people and choose very carefully. Where do you find most of your job candidates? It sometimes feels like candidates are coming from every direction. The majority come through emails or employee referrals. We also find candidates out in the real world. For example, we&amp;#039;ll go to a gaming conference or a Maker Faire and interact with different people, who then follow up about a job. Connections are made this way all the time. I don&amp;#039;t know anyone in the industry. What&amp;#039;s the best way I can get an interview? You should come to an event and spend a few minutes with us. We do about one to two events a week around the world. We share and tweet wildly, so you can find us. For example, we had a big block party in New York recently and invited all of our users \u2014 and all of New York City. We met a lot of people that day.  Do I have to live in New York to work for Kickstarter? There are not any jobs located in other places, but we see applicants from everywhere. If you&amp;#039;re the right fit, we help you move here. How much should I know about the company&amp;#039;s history before I interview? You don&amp;#039;t need to know the whole community narrative. But you need to have a basic knowledge of what Kickstarter is and how people use it. I am open in interviews to answering all kinds of questions about the company, but when it&amp;#039;s clear someone hasn&amp;#039;t taken the time to do much research, it&amp;#039;s like they haven&amp;#039;t put their all into the interview. Do my non-job-related hobbies or interests account for anything? Should I tout these in my application? For sure. I think that&amp;#039;s something that we pay extra-special attention to. The way that someone can really knock our socks off is to tell us about those nontraditional experiences and how they led them to apply for that job. A few people in our office have secret skills that came out in the interview and really made them stand out as candidates as well as after they got hired. For instance, our office manager has experience as a butcher and chef. When he told us about that during his interviews, we definitely had a &amp;quot;Whoa, well this could be amazing ...&amp;quot; moment. He now helps ensure that our food is healthy and exciting. We also have the pleasure of interviewing lots of people who are artists or makers or musicians on the side, and the idea of them being able to bring that creativity into the office \u2014 being able to think about the work through the lens of the community they serve \u2014 is just invaluable. It makes them great candidates and awesome colleagues. What if I don&amp;#039;t have a degree specific to the job? Can I apply anyway? Degrees are mostly irrelevant. Most of our engineers don&amp;#039;t have engineering degrees. They studied poetry or art and also learned computer science. I&amp;#039;d say we are looking for people who are a little less traditional in their experience but have a real passion for a particular field. How much does the &amp;quot;years of experience&amp;quot; section on a job listing matter? I think it depends on the role. It&amp;#039;s a measuring stick that lets you know what we&amp;#039;re looking for and who your competition will be. But it&amp;#039;s not a hard-and-fast rule. We want to help people develop their careers here. But to get your foot in the door, you need to explain why you&amp;#039;re special. How can I convince you that I&amp;#039;m special? It really comes down to telling a compelling story about yourself. A few people who are now senior employees here didn&amp;#039;t get interviews because of their r\u00E9sum\u00E9s. They took action by meeting people on the team, sending letters in the mail in addition to emailing, and interacting with the founders using social media. They really extended their reach to make sure our team saw them and knew how enthused they were about Kickstarter.  If I want to grow into a different job at Kickstarter, will I have the chance to do this? We really love it when people here at Kickstarter do special projects. If you are a person who loves comedy or loves film or design but your role is something totally different, there are many opportunities to pitch in with the team that might be doing that. For example, our receptionist loves comedy. He started making internal videos for the office that showed his love of that work. It&amp;#039;s now evolved into him helping the production team on special projects. We like to think of ourselves as a learning, mentoring environment. What questions should I always ask in an interview? My very favorite part of any interview is when a candidate starts asking questions. That lets me know how curious they are and gives me insight into what they&amp;#039;re thinking about. The most important questions would be about the job itself and the day-to-day beyond getting hired. Really show an interest in being a part of the team. What questions should I never ask? I don&amp;#039;t think there are any bad questions. We definitely want people to be themselves. Maybe don&amp;#039;t ask things that are really self-evident \u2014 things you can find on our website, for example. What&amp;#039;s a mistake people make in interviews all the time and don&amp;#039;t know it? The biggest mistake I see isn&amp;#039;t in interviews but in applications: typos. It is stunning how many cover letters and r\u00E9sum\u00E9s I receive with misspellings. Sometimes the company name is wrong or even their own name is wrong. I don&amp;#039;t usually go much further with that candidate. It&amp;#039;s just crucial that you&amp;#039;re completely detailed and precise in those few minutes when you have our attention. What if I interview and don&amp;#039;t get the job? Is it OK to stay in touch? We have someone on staff now who applied for a job a few years ago. He wasn&amp;#039;t quite right at that time. He kept working and applied again \u2014 and he wasn&amp;#039;t right. Then the job description changed and he still wasn&amp;#039;t the right match. Then a couple of years after his initial application, we had the job that was the perfect match for him and we reached out. He made a great impression at every interview, stayed in contact with us, maintained a positive and enthusiastic attitude the whole time, and we thought of him for a job, which he accepted. Do thank-you cards or emails matter to you? Yes, 100 million percent. They make a big difference. Just having the attitude and mindset that you should send a thank-you note tells us that you are a thoughtful and caring person. It takes 30 seconds to send an email. It doesn&amp;#039;t need to be anything fancy. How creative can I get in an application? Is it possible to go too far? We have received all sorts of hilarious things, and we love it. It&amp;#039;s really great when someone pushes the boundaries. I&amp;#039;ve had job applications sent as a pi\u00F1ata. Someone sent us a kickstand for a motorcycle that had Kickstarter engraved on it. We get videos all the time. People remake the website into a job application or r\u00E9sum\u00E9. There are all sorts of creative ways people connect with us, and we enjoy them all. Is there a dress code for interviews? I think the most important thing is to be yourself. We are a pretty low-key and relaxed place to work. We want everyone to be comfortable here, and our fashion definitely represents that. Be respectful, but let your individuality shine.  Kickstarter projects have an artistic and community. How involved in those areas do I need to be to work here? We&amp;#039;re just really looking for people who have a familiarity with the site. You don&amp;#039;t need to be an expert in independent film or design. If you&amp;#039;ve backed or run projects, that&amp;#039;s fantastic and we want to hear about it, but it&amp;#039;s not a requirement. If I have my own Kickstarter idea, should I bring it up in the interview? We&amp;#039;re certainly open to hearing about it. But the focus of the interview is on you, not your idea. Is it OK to bring up salary? It&amp;#039;s perfectly appropriate to ask about a range after the first few interviews. Timing does matter. Make sure whoever your interviewer is knows you&amp;#039;re there for the job and salary is part of the discussion, not the foundation for the discussion. Are there any rules of etiquette that are broken all the time? I don&amp;#039;t think so. We have really great candidates. People tend to be respectful and excited, and that&amp;#039;s what we like to see. The furthest people ever go is contacting everyone in the company or trying to guess many, many email addresses. That gets a little bit annoying. Don&amp;#039;t spam the company. Limit your communication to the right people. In today&amp;#039;s job market though, it&amp;#039;s hard to know if you&amp;#039;ve made an impression or if the job is even still open. Is it OK to be a little persistent? I empathize. Job searching is stressful. It&amp;#039;s hard to know if you&amp;#039;ve gained any traction anywhere. It should be instinctual to work very hard [for] something you care about. But you have to be mindful of pushing it too far. Following up is an interesting one. There isn&amp;#039;t a clear etiquette there. How soon should you be in touch with someone again after the interview? If they tell you it&amp;#039;s going to be awhile before you hear back, it&amp;#039;s really great when the candidate is mindful of that. But if time has passed, there&amp;#039;s nothing wrong with a friendly ping. Do you have any pet peeves in interviews? This might be old-fashioned, but lateness is a big deal. Being on time to an interview shows that you care about the interview. Now, showing up a half hour early is also a little bit awkward for everybody. About 10 minutes in advance is perfect. Also, don&amp;#039;t send me loads of attachments in an email. It&amp;#039;s perfectly fine to include information in the body of an email. We actually ask in all of our job listings for people to share links with us that help us get to know them. These should be links to a personal website, a blog, or examples of your previous work. When candidates actually do that, we get a lot out of it. We&amp;#039;re able to see how they think. Interview Insider is weekly series offering tips for getting a job at some of your favorite companies. Check back every Thursday for the latest interview. Follow Heather on Twitter. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/career/interviews/a29543/interview-insider-kickstarter/>