Business Editor's Notebook: If you want to find workers you need to jazz it up a bit - The Union Leader

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FREE food and drinks. Live music. Raffles from local businesses. A grand prize trip for two to New Orleans.

All that’s missing is an appearance from a Boston sports celebrity, and you got the makings of a sales promotion at a car dealership.

Athenium Analytics isn’t looking to sell new Jeep Cherokees. The Dover tech company is on the hunt to find fresh talent.

On Tuesday at Jazz, Jobs & Gumbo, Athenium hopes to hire at least five people to join the 50 workers it employs in Dover. The company will be conducting in-person interviews and plans to extend offers within 48 hours after the invitation-only event.

Athenium’s headquarters are housed on the fifth floor of the Washington Street Mills, a downtown mixed-use building owned by developer Eric Chinburg that includes apartments, restaurants and other businesses.

“A big reason we’re having this event in Dover next week is we are very much committed to this community, and it’s been really good to us, especially the University of New Hampshire and Chinburg,” Athenium CEO Bill Pardue said Friday. “And we do think there’s still value in people being able to intermingle, not just virtually.”

That said, Athenium also has been recruiting workers from other states and allowing them to work from home, a policy it plans to keep beyond the pandemic, Pardue said. Over the past few months, the company has hired people who live in Arizona, Oklahoma and the Carolinas.

“People can choose where they want to work with us,” said Pardue, who lives in Dover and also has a home in Washington, D.C. “They’ll need to obviously perform the shared goals we get for our clients. We no longer have imperatives about location.”

Relaxing those restrictions will enable the company to continue growing.

“It gives us access to a greater, broader pool. There’s nothing more important that we do than find and keep the best people,” Pardue said. “It’s the No. 1 thing. We’re looking for inventive ways to find those people.”

Right now, workers are a tough find. New Hampshire’s unemployment rate has dipped back to pre-pandemic levels, now less than 3%.

Athenium develops performance management and risk analytics software for the insurance industry. Its products are also used to predict hurricanes and other severe weather. Among its partners is Q-Tel, a private venture firm that serves the intelligence community, including the CIA.

The company is looking for a mix of technical, sales and support roles, including a full stack engineer, “somebody who understands everything from the interface the client is using to the technology that underlies and secures all our data,” Pardue said.

It’s also looking for technical solutions specialists, people who can interact with clients and answer their questions on a daily basis.

“This is a fantastic job for someone coming out of college with some computer science and computer engineering capabilities,” said Pardue, adding that the company is searching for workers from a variety of backgrounds.

“So the range is anywhere from someone who has a decade or two of experience to someone who is looking for their first great opportunity straight out of school,” he said.

Athenium often recruits from UNH.

“The talent base here is an unbelievably well-kept secret. Our college grads can compete with graduates from any university anywhere in the country, bar none,” he said.

The Crescent City theme of the hiring event is a nod to Pardue, a native of New Orleans whose resume includes co-founding several other companies.

Jazz, Jobs & Gumbo sounds like a whimsical way to attract recruits, but the hiring process will be rigorous.

“Typically, people who interview with us and are thinking about making this choice to join our team interview with eight to 12 people. Everybody does. And across functions. You don’t just interview with other engineers or other sales execs. You get a good sense of who we are as a people.”

And as animals. The hiring process usually includes meeting some company mascots.

“We have fantastic office dogs. A whole big variety of them, Pardue said.

But they haven’t been around for a while. Nor have their owners, who have been working from home these many months.

“Right now we only have four to six people coming in every day, but it’s starting to build,” Pardue said.

Jazz, Jobs & Gumbo runs from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Athenium Analytics, 1 Washington St., No. 5145, Dover. Registration is required for the invitation-only hiring event. Apply at Athenium.com/hiring.

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