Last August it was announced Uber was opening a U.S. General and Administrative Hub at The Epic in Deep Ellum. The outpost will be one of the rideshare pioneer’s largest offices worldwide—second only to its San Francisco headquarters—and will bring around 3,000 jobs to the area along with more than $75 million in capital investment.

Last week, in a company blog post, Uber laid out its hiring plan for the new office. The process includes bringing in two in-house recruiters on short-term assignments to build out the Dallas workforce: Katie Gonzalez from Uber’s Washington DC office and Gianni Sesto from its San Francisco headquarters, who started at the company as a tech sourcer.

The assignment was described by Sesto as a challenge because the entire office is being built from the ground up. For staffing, this means ensuring headcount approval, short- and long-term growth plans, and organizational design within the office, along with putting the proper systems for candidate onboarding and career development in place.

“It has been exciting to see the immediate positivity and support from the metroplex with our announcement to move to Dallas,” Sesto said in the post. “I’ve learned that the city is truly excited about the arrival of our office here. Individuals have personally reached out to me expressing their excitement about what Uber can offer to the workforce here. I can only imagine what this feeling will be like in the future.”

Uber opportunities

According to Uber’s blog post, employees in the Dallas office will be tasked with solving a variety of challenges (job openings can be viewed here). In addition to creating new technologies, Uber also has the challenge of increasing the size of its office over the next couple of years,” Sesto said.

Innovation will be a key role, like having employees work on complex engineering challenges such as urbanized air travel and self-driving vehicles. The City of Dallas has already approved Uber’s self-driving vehicles for manual data collection and testing.

For urbanized air travel, Uber has said the region will be a future skyport location for Uber Elevate’s aerial shared transportation service called Uber Air. The goal is that by 2023, air taxis will be transporting riders through commercial flight operations in three launch markets: Dallas-Fort Worth, L.A., and Melbourne, Australia.

But, in the blog post, Sesto said Dallas—a “rich city for aviation”—would be the first launch location for the Uber Elevate service.

Dallas developer Hillwood is helping to develop the local infrastructure platform for the skyports, and construction is already underway on the first one at Hillwood’s Frisco Station, a 242-acre mixed-use development in Frisco.

Internal initiatives

When it comes to new employees, Uber has some big plans. Travis Considine, Uber’s communications manager, previously told Dallas Innovates Uber has set an audacious goal: to become the most diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace on the planet.

“At Uber, our mission is to ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion. We see direct parallels between how we ignite opportunity through our company and how we ignite it within our company. But we also know that a solely data-driven approach will never be sufficient, because D&I is more than a box to check or a target to hit,” he said. “The numbers matter, but they’re only a starting point; a commitment to diversity and inclusion has to run much deeper.”

In Uber’s Global Self-ID survey, it asked employees from around the world to share with granularity how they identify. Considine said this was to better recognize and support the diverse populations already represented in the workforce. “That’s also why we created Gender Transition Guidelines for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming employees who are planning, or going through, a gender transition,” he said.

Uber has a partnership with Harvard Business School Online to offer executive education to current and aspiring leaders, with a focus on culture, leadership, and inclusion, Considine said. He also pointed to Women at Uber, which connects, empowers, and supports the advancement of women within the company, being “open to everyone—men and women, managers, and individual contributors.”

“We are building a strong community of women and allies to share knowledge, provide access to leadership and mentoring, and attract and retain top talent to Uber,” he said.

How to get hired

Uber is best known for reimagining the way the world moves, so it believes employees can best learn by doing, Considine said. The idea is that “there is no better classroom than real-world experience.”

“From how you get home from work, to how you eat meals, or how you move huge shipments of anything, the work we do is shaping the future of mobility and changing the way people live,” he said. “To get there, we’ve brought together a collective of optimists and doers to tackle some of the most challenging problems of our time.”

Considine outlined three key areas Uber considers when looking at potential employees:

• Creative problem solving: “We enjoy working on hard problems together because the hardest challenges are often the most rewarding.”
• Shape the world you want: “Help improve local economies, make roads safer, and bring opportunities to millions of people around the world.”
• Welcoming for everyone: “We want to create a workplace that is inclusive and reflects the diversity of the cities we serve.”

Gonzalez and Sesto also offered advice for anyone interested in working at the new Dallas office. Gonzalez suggested coming to the interview with questions prepared for the interviewers, as interview panels are usually comprised of Uber employees from different backgrounds, locations, and cross-functional teams. By asking questions, interviewees can help hiring managers understand what projects they are interested in and the value they could bring to the team.

Sesto said the process is designed to make sure candidates are both a fit for Uber and that Uber is a fit for the candidate as well.

“It is important to be true to yourself and interview us as much as we interview you. Uber is a company comprised of thousands of individuals with diverse backgrounds,” he said. “Our interview process highlights your work experience and how you handle certain workplace situations.”

Dallas may be excited about the new Uber outpost, but Uber is pretty excited about Dallas, too.

“For me, the most exciting part about Uber Dallas is getting to see an office grow right before my eyes. When Gianni and I arrived in Dallas about a month ago, there were only 15 employees in the office,” Gonzalez says. “Since that time, we’ve quadrupled the existing hires in the office. There’s a real energy here and the opportunity to see an office grow so rapidly before your eyes is a unique experience that I’m really grateful for.” 

Alex Edwards contributed to this report.

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