UNCUBED: NYC tech job fair hits World Cafe Live, plans to return next year

Updated 6/22/12 11:27 a.m. Organizer Tarek Pertew got back to us with some numbers: About 125 jobs were available from the 25 companies at the event and 185 people attended the fair. He also elaborated on his point about coming back to Philly: this year’s UNCUBED did not make money, but he hopes that when the event returns and grows, it will eventually do so.

Dozens of tech startup enthusiasts descended on UNCUBED at World Cafe Live yesterday in search of a job. But you wouldn’t have known it.

There was ping-pong and foosball. There was “plenty of beer, like, too much beer,” according to organizer Tarek Pertew. There was plenty of swag, like, too much swag. There was even moonshine wine (yes, really).

But OK, there were a lot of resumes and business cards, too.

25 Philly-area startups set up shop at the job fair, organized by New York City’s Wakefield. More than half of those startups were from Philly proper. Pertew says he would have liked to have seen more companies from inside the city. The startups ranged from more well-known names, like TicketLeap and Monetate, to teams that don’t even have a website yet, like inRecruit, described as social network for sports recruiting.

The job-seeking crowd seemed to range from the young and eager (Leadnomics‘ Brian Sloane said he spoke with a college kid who was trying to set up an internship for next summer) to the older and more experienced. Several prospective employers told us they were pleasantly surprised by the variety of skills everyone had to offer — there weren’t only programmers, but business analysts, client service specialists, marketing gurus and more.

Hesham Fas, a programmer from South Jersey, said the fair was useful in more ways than one.

“I’m looking for a job,” he said, “but I’m also looking for ideas.”

Startups could only register ($700 for those with more than $2,000,000 in funding and more than 50 employees, $450 for those with less than $2,000,000 in funding and fewer than 50 employees and $200 for the “unfunded startup”) if they had jobs to offer, Pertew said. He couldn’t immediately provide us with a number of jobs available at UNCUBED [Updated: See comments above]. A tiny bit of context: Monetate, who came armed with its team of recruiters, had 21 positions available.

Pertew said he’s definitely bringing UNCUBED back to Philly, and he hopes to make it even bigger. At first, he said, he wasn’t sure about coming back. From the business model angle, it wouldn’t be worth it [Updated: See comments above]. But, he told Technically Philly, “the entire city supported me.”

Case in point: Mayor Michael Nutter rolled in shortly before the event ended. Pertew thanked him. Mayor Michael Bloomberg never showed up at New York’s UNCUBED, he said.

UNCUBED started in New York and has been expanding to cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Dublin, Ireland.