Shopify is a commerce platform that serves over 600,000+ merchants and employs over 3000 people across the globe. We’re always on the lookout for highly skilled individuals with diverse backgrounds to join our team, and that requires us to connect with them outside traditional recruitment channels. That’s why last year we ran the “Build Things, Show Shopify” initiative inviting developers outside of Shopify to build an app and showcase their finished product to a multidisciplinary panel of Shopify employees as well as in front of hiring managers and VCs. The outcome? Not only did we build a local developer community in Ottawa, but we added a number of potential hires to our recruiting pipeline.