Max Levchin, Slide Founder
40 under 40 rank: 25
What openings do you have at Slide now?
We are always short great product managers and designers. We are rarely limited by our demand, but rather by the available supply of awesome people in the job market.
What's great about the jobs?
You get to work at the very forefront of innovation in social software, so you learn an enormous amount very quickly.
What are you looking for?
My favorite type of hire is the budding entrepreneur; someone who in a few years will want to start their own thing. They know that with every effort at Slide they are ultimately investing in themselves the most and so tend to be very productive.
Any secrets to impressing you?
Bring not just your skills, but also your thoughts (about the industry, Slide, etc.) to the interview. If you're engaged and interested, it tends to stand out. --Jessi Hempel
Charles Best, DonorsChoose.org Founder and CEO
Photo: Patrick McMullen/Sipa
40 under 40 rank: 35
What openings do you have now at DonorsChoose?
One for an Associate Director in our San Francisco office; and we're permanently on the lookout for great engineers.
What's great about the jobs?
The opportunity to work alongside wicked-smart, passionate colleagues who are unleashing the creativity of our most dedicated teachers [and] to construct a whole new model for doing good.
What are you looking for?
Customer obsession. Humility and humor.
Any secrets to impressing you?
A plainspoken manner of communicating. Disdain for buzzwords like "leverage" and "synergy." --Jessica Shambora
Meredith Whitney, Financial analyst
Courtesy: Oppenheimer & Co.
40 under 40 rank: 17
What openings do you have now at Meredith Whitney Advisory Group?
We are looking for 10 more people in research, sales trading and back office.
What's great about the jobs?
Our firm has a very special culture. The standards are high both professionally as well as ethically.
What are you looking for?
Put simply, we are a hypercompetitive team of "nice people." We take that very seriously.
Any secrets to impressing you?
Do extensive research on the firm before the first interview. It is amazing how much that can differentiate a candidate. --Katie Benner
Rio Caraeff, VEVO President and CEO
Courtesy: Universal Music Group
40 under 40 rank: 32
What openings do you have now at VEVO?
We're looking to hire roughly 35 at the moment, with more jobs added once the launch happens. We're looking for people across just about every level and discipline. From ad sales, engineering and accounting to music programming, there are a number of positions that we're looking to fill in next six months or so.
What's great about the jobs?
VEVO is a young and brand new company with an ambitious plan.
Any secrets to impressing you?
What we look for in a candidate above just about everything else is passion and enthusiasm. If you are passionate about music and about creating great music experiences online, then you have the critical ingredient to make VEVO a success. --Chris Tkaczyk
4. Matthew Flannery and Premal Shah, Kiva
Courtesy: Kiva
40 under 40 rank: 31
What openings do you have now at Kiva?
Shah: Seven positions growing up to 13 in the next two months. [You can see details at www.kiva.org]
What's great about the jobs?
Shah: Where else can you blend what you love with what you do well with the momentum that is Kiva?
Flannery: It's easy to see how you're having an impact at Kiva. You can watch it happen every day.
What are you looking for?
Flannery: People who are entrepreneurial, who value teamwork and are incredibly intelligent.
Any secrets to impressing you?
Shah: Humility and raw smarts.
Flannery: I like it when people are genuinely intellectually fascinated by what they do and like to discuss the minutiae in an interview. --Jessica Shambora
Aaron Patzer, Mint.com Founder and CEO
Courtesy: Mint
40 under 40 rank: 29
What openings do you have now at Mint.com?
We have 4 open jobs at Mint, and expect about 17 openings after combining with Intuit. We'll be hiring quite a lot -- mostly in engineering, user-interface and -experience design and product management, but also a few in customer service and marketing.
What's great about the jobs?
You get to shape how literally tens of millions of people in the country make their financial decisions every single day.
What are you looking for?
I look for someone who has made conscious, rational, well-reasoned decisions from high school through college to internships to your first job to now. If you've floundered, if you fell into jobs, if you've changed your track ten times or even three, you're not for me. I like people who know what they want and who they are in life and always have.
Any secrets to impressing you?
Don't be that Harvard/Stanford/Yale B-school graduate who says they can do product, marketing, or business development. If you say that, I know you can't do a single one of those things, as each is a science unto itself. I don't care where you went to school, or how many decades of experience you have -- show me what you've done (and more importantly, why logically you made the decisions you did) -- and a job at Mint/Quicken/Intuit Personal Finance is yours. --Jessica Shambora
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Founder
Courtesy: Facebook
40 under 40 rank: 2
What openings do you have now at Facebook?
I can't offer the total number of positions, but we're hiring all across the company. Our main focus is hiring the best technical talent around, from machine learning to infrastructure to front end development. We have many opportunities in every facet of software engineering; artificial intelligence, distributed databases, operating systems, interaction design and much more. We also have openings in the sales, design, and online operations functions, along with other areas.
What's great about the jobs?
Personal impact. The site is built by a relatively small group of the smartest engineers where the ratio of Facebook users to Facebook engineers makes it so that every engineer here is responsible for more than one million users. It's hard to have an impact like that at any other tech company in the world. We also move as fast as we can to launch things quickly and then iterate to make them better. We would rather take risks and break a few things in the process than move slowly. It's not unusual for the code someone writes one day to be in use by hundreds of millions of users that same night.
What are you looking for?
We're a culture of entrepreneurs and builders who move fast to get things done and strive to make an impact on the world.
Any secrets to impressing you?
If you really want to catch our attention, see if you can solve our programming puzzles at facebook.com/puzzles. --Jessi Hempel
Raul Vazquez, Walmart.com CEO
Photo: Jim Wilson/New York Times/Redux
40 under 40 rank: 14
What openings do you have now at Walmart.com?
We have over 40 positions open in everything from product management to engineering to marketing. We've been able to grow the site at two to three times the rate of the e-commerce industry.
Any secrets to impressing you?
If you're interested in working here, you should be someone [who's] passionate about what you do. Have a good grasp of what you've done -- be able to talk intelligently about the results you've driven. And, especially if you're going to be managing others, I look for compassion. --Mina Kimes