As Wilmington’s technology sector grows, there is increased competition for talent, local company officials say. That situation has them thinking up creative ways to recruit and retain these workers.

"The rapidly growing demand for tech professionals in Wilmington is a strong indication that Wilmington is becoming a knowledge-based economy,” CastleBranch Corp. CEO Brett Martin said in an email.

Earlier this year, banking software company nCino offered a course in Salesforce, its foundational software, for a steep discount. The course was available to anyone with a technical background.

The special offer was a boon not only to course participants. It also gave nCino an opportunity to look over the students – who were learning nCino’s platform – and recruit anyone who showed promise.

More recently, nCino took a further step, hosting what it termed a DevChallenge event April 25 aimed at graduating undergraduates and graduate students in the field of computer science and management information systems. The challenge, said company spokeswoman Kathryn Cook, was for candidates to “recreate an application using existing source code and bring it onto the Force.com platform – the basis for nCino’s Bank Operating System – then demonstrate it for a panel of nCino judges.”
 
During the 90-minute timed challenge, students were asked to showcase their developer skills, creativity and ability to solve problems, said Tom DiVittorio, nCino’s head of product development and engineering. In an interview before the competition, he said that he and other nCino officials would be looking for a combination of technology capability and creativity.  

“We want to drive app adoption in the user community,” he continued. “Can they solve the problem? How do they solve the problem? Their application must be fun and easy to use.”

The event gave company officials the opportunity to evaluate contestants’ skills, but also to assess how they would fit with nCino’s culture, DiVittorio said.

The competition’s 15 participants were a mix of graduating seniors at University of North Carolina Wilmington and East Carolina University, a few graduate students and several recent graduates.

The top three contestants were Michael Fabbri, Chris Fernandez and Ken Truong, Cook said. Truong was chosen as the winner of the challenge and took home the event’s $500 grand prize. Truong graduated from UNCW in 2012 with a degree in business and a concentration in MIS. He has also been taking nCino’s Salesforce certification course.
 
“nCino will be reaching out to many of [the] participants to schedule interviews for internships as well as full-time positions at nCino,” Cook said.

The key element is identifying the next generation of talent, said DiVittorio, who said that nCino hopes to do “many more” such competitions in the future.

Identifying talent may mean recognizing potential rather than looking for specific training, said Steve Tetrault, co-founder and vice president of Gig Salad, a web-based talent booking agency.

“Our most qualified developers are self-taught,” he said.”Sometimes the only way to learn is by doing it yourself. Each project presents its own problems, so we need developers who can learn quickly and adapt to the needs of the project. Someone with the basic skill set and the right attitude, and who can play nice, can end up being a great hire.”

Most of Wilmington-based Gig Salad’s six current developers came in to the company as relative novices and were trained on the job.

“It’s a three-year timeframe to mentor them and raise them up,” Tetrault said. “We would love to find someone with senior-level experience, but we will have to pay for it. They might have to relocate. But we’re just going to do it.”

CastleBranch, committed to hiring local talent when possible, has held a series of well-attended career events – the latest on April 24.

“We brought in close to 200 applicants," said company spokeswoman Elizabeth Bloch of that event. “We had some great applicants that attended this event and even made offers on the same day. We will be holding another career event in May, date to be determined.”

Despite wanting to nurture home-grown talent, finding enough people with the right skills may also require looking farther afield, Martin said. 
 
“If we want to support the growth of our tech community, not only must we support our colleges and universities, but also commit our focus, energy and funds on attracting talent from outside of Wilmington,” he said. 

“If all we do is entice employees to switch from one local job to another we will ultimately destroy the community we have all worked so hard to foster. We are in the midst of reaching out to many of the local tech leaders in an effort to put together a committee focused on attracting outside tech talent to Wilmington.”