Aboard a giant bus, Atlassian’s top talent attraction specialists swept across Europe’s biggest cities earlier this year in a quest to find 15 awesome developers and relocate them to Sydney, all expenses paid.

With Australia faced with a desperate skills shortage for exceptional programming talent “Europe we are coming to steal your geeks” was Atlassian’s answer, a 15 day hiring campaign which attracted over 1000 applications and successfully filled 15 programming jobs.

Catching up with Joris Luijke (below right), Atlassian’s VP of Human Resources and Talent, this is what he had to say “It was amazing. Within a few weeks we had more than 1000 applications so we just picked the 15 absolute best” talking further about talent attraction in general he said “Sydney is such a great place to work and has everything to offer. Until recently we didn’t have the workplaces that reach the standard of some of the Silicon Valley companies. I think now we do, it is fantastic talent attraction tool.”

Atlassian take talent attraction seriously they offer employees all the usual perks plus a $10,000 referral incentive; free breakfasts; free beer; $3000 bonus after five years and you can even take your dog into the office.

Atlassian’s Careers Site: https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers