How The Trade Desk uses Workback to hire and upskill software engineers

About

The Trade Desk is a global advertising technology company helping to create a better, more transparent open Internet through principled, intelligent advertising. 

With Workback, The Trade Desk has embraced a new way of hiring non-traditional software engineers  
Apprenticeships - paired with on-the-job upskilling - create new talent pools for software engineers to get started in contingent roles
The Trade Desk is embracing new hiring methods to reach bootcamp, self-taught, and non traditional candidates to the organization
Summary: 
The Trade Desk launched software apprenticeships in 2021
100% Graduation Rate of Software Engineering Associates
The 2nd cohort launched January 2023
Situation:
The Trade Desk  is a global technology company, handling more than 13 million queries per second, more than the volume of global web search traffic, meaning the company operates at unprecedented scale. The company has also built something even stronger and more valuable: an award-winning culture based on trust, empathy, collaboration, and ownership. The Trade Desk set out to hire and upskill non-traditional software engineering talent, given the goal to double headcount within five years, while maintaining a market-leading culture and highly productive team.   

Approach:
The Trade Desk turned to Workback for help. Using Workback, in 2022 The Trade Desk launched its first-ever Software Engineering Apprenticeship program. The goal was to find and hire early career technical talent that could perform at the company’s high standards, and innovate with new employee onboarding methods, including on-the-job upskilling and mentorship.  Workback provided talent matching, hard and soft skill assessments, personalized learning curriculum, and development and skills gap reporting – all designed to enable early career software engineers to hit the ground running and grow into successful contributors quickly. 

Result:
With Workback, The Trade Desk successfully hired two full-time software engineers from non-traditional backgrounds, and developed them into meaningful contributors 25 percent faster than previous early career hires. The Trade Desk plans to continue using Workback to recruit and upskill non-traditional engineering talent, and continue its coordinated effort to innovate in talent acquisition, upskilling, and employee experience. 

To learn more about this work, contact CEO Chris Kluesener - c@takeworkback.com 
"Workback changed my life with this opportunity"

I can't believe I get to work with this amazing team every day

- Shristi

Software Engineering Associate, The Trade Desk