Sortable pitches company as refuge for tech workers escaping Trump's America

The Kitchener, Ont., startup launched a cheeky recruiting campaign this week offering "a safe place for smart, nice people in the technology industry who are already starting to look for alternative living arrangements in anticipation of a Donald Trump presidency."

The company rolled out the targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, featuring Trump's image and text asking "Thinking of moving to Canada?" or "Missing home?" 

If the answer is yes, Sortable is hiring. 

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"We are an advertising business, right? So we understand ads, we understand how to get distribution and get ads in front of people."

Luring tech talent back home

​He said the company has been watching the lead up to the election with interest and it inspired them to get creative with their hiring campaign. 

"It's bizarre and it's funny and we thought, why not use that as an opportunity to sort of promote the fact that we're hiring aggressively and we're looking globally," Reid said. "We're doing it because we need to find people and it's fun."

The company recently raised $1.4 million in funding, and went from three employees in 2015 to 24 in 2016, with the hope of hiring another 25 employees – predominantly developers – in the near future. 

He said the campaign is targeted not just to American citizens, but foreign workers and Canadian expats.

"It's a bit of a sore point that so many American tech companies syphon off the talent from the University of Waterloo. I think outside of Stanford, University of Waterloo is the number one school that Bay-area tech companies hire from," Reid said. 

They're happy with the response so far. Reid said the advertisements they've posted on Facebook have been commented on, and shared — a rare feat for an ad which, he said, is normally ignored.