SEATTLE — Forget nap rooms and signing bonuses. The recruiting war among Seattle’s tech companies has heated up so much that one company will now give you a Tesla to come aboard.
Axon, a Seattle-based division of Taser that makes body cameras for police departments, said Wednesday it would buy a Tesla Model 3 for eligible candidates hired by the company.
“We wanted to rise above the noise and find the best possible people,” Axon general manager Marcus Womack said.
The price of a new Model 3 starts at $35,000, and Axon thinks its worth offering as a job lure considering how much it generally costs to acquire a new employee and the value that person brings to the company, Womack said.
There are a few strings: Teslas are available only to some of the positions Axon has open, including technical jobs such as full stack engineer and web developer. Qualified hires are able to sign up for a car waiting list after they’ve made it through their first 90 days at Axon.
Existing employees can get a Tesla, too, by referring three people for critical roles that Axon ends up hiring.
Tech companies are flocking to Seattle from all over the world to take advantage of the technical talent in the area. But with headcount growing at entrenched leaders such as Amazon and Microsoft, as well as at startups, experts say there are far from enough tech workers in the area to go around.
Enter Tesla.
This isn’t the first unique recruiting tactic from Axon. The company sailed a boat on Lake Union in the summer sporting a sail that read “Write code. Save lives.”
Axon has 100 employees in Seattle, and its body camera technology has been used by more than 3,500 law enforcement agencies since the camera was released in 2009.
The company plans to hire more than 50 people in the next year.
