
They say the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach.
Irvine’s BlueCava Inc. is taking that to heart in its recruiting efforts.
The maker of device recognition and anti-fraud software—which split off from Irvine’s Uniloc USA Inc.—is adding hundreds of jobs.
It’s top-secret recruitment tool?
A BlueCava-branded food truck doling out free gourmet lunches.
BlueCava is planning a road trip in which the lunch truck rolls up to offices of technology companies in a bald-faced effort to poach talented employees. The tour will travel from Orange County to the Bay Area.
“We think this is will be a fun sort of competitive thing,” Chief Executive David Norris said. “We are going throughout OC and identifying the places where talented people might be.”
The BlueCava truck serves a mix of Thai, Chinese and Mexican food, Norris said.
Followers can register for a free lunch on BlueCava’s website and also via Twitter. They are alerted when the truck is rolling into their area.
One company BlueCava has set its sights on: Google Inc.
“We will get up in Google’s face,” Norris said. “Most people wouldn’t be gutsy enough to poach people directly from Google.”
BlueCava hired some 40 workers in the past two months. It has plans to hire “a couple hundred” in the coming years, Norris said.
“We have gone through thousands of candidates,” Norris said. “It’s an exciting time for us. We are growing like crazy.”
BlueCava handles sales of Uniloc’s software, which helps online retailers and other website operators protect against fraud and improve targeted online advertising.
It split off from Uniloc last year. It takes Uniloc’s technology for protecting against software piracy and tailors it for use by online retailers and other website operators.
Uniloc still owns a stake in BlueCava, which until this year shared the company’s space.
BlueCava is gearing up for a move to its new headquarters in University Research Park near the University of California, Irvine.