Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT), a marketplace for educators to find and share educational content, has partnered with Underdog.io to supercharge their lean team and help them find great tech talent.

We spoke with Emily Chen, TpT’s first dedicated technical recruiter, to learn how Underdog has helped her build their tech stack.

Teachers Pay Teachers has a mission oriented culture and looks for people that are genuinely interested in empowering educators.

Chen says that candidates that have a “connection to the mission and our purpose is the secret sauce when finding a good coder.” They look for engineers “with a strong technical background, experience coding and shipping” but the “cherry on top” is that they care about the work they are doing.

This care is scrutinized throughout the entire interview process and is embodied in the first of the Engineering team’s four core values. “We believe listening to educators helps us build the highest impact product.”

Chen spent her first year at TpT establishing the structure and architecture of the engineering hiring process. With none of her own time left over for sourcing, she leveraged Underdog.io to ensure there was a “steady stream of qualified and vetted candidates” in their pipeline. Underdog.io has been a “great source of quality candidates” and an “impactful tool to have in their toolbox.”

“As a small team, it’s been a really valuable platform that allows us to better prioritize our limited time and resources,” Chen says.

Keith Martin, a software engineer, is one of the candidates TpT hired through Underdog.io. He says: “Underdog.io helped match me with companies based on criteria I provided, and Teachers Pay Teachers met all of my expectations for the next position I was looking for.” As for how things have been going since he’s joined, Martin says, “I'm very happy at TpT, it's an exciting company to work for and you feel like you're having a true impact on the world. I'm learning a lot every day and they're very focused on my career development.”

Apart from high-quality candidates like Keith, Chen says she also recommends Underdog.io to other companies in her peer group because of how easy the platform is for her and her team to use. Unlike agencies that typically send one resume at a time, she appreciates that she doesn’t have to wait for one-offs to come in for review. Instead, she likes the feeling of signing into the Underdog.io platform to “pick and choose and say yes” on demand. And thanks to Underdog.io’s integration with Greenhouse, TpT's applicant tracking system, moving new prospects into her hiring funnel is as easy as one click.

Overall, Chen recommends Underdog.io to other companies that are looking for an easy to use platform and a consistent source of top-notch candidates. Chen doesn’t see that changing anytime soon and is looking forward to her continuing partnership with Underdog.io.