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Recruited
When Olivia Gesso skydives into a recruiting job with KavaTech-a hip start-up where twenty-somethings binge drink, gamble, and code theirway to luxury cars and fat bonuses-it's almost hard to remember how she gotthere. No one would have expected an eco-warrior hellbent on saving the seedsof an extinct tree to find her way into this silicon jungle, serving ashigh-heeled bait for geeky coders. But student debt and desperation driveOlivia farther from her life-changing work on a remote Indian Ocean island thanshe ever thought possible.Now she's lost in a fast-paced, high-stakes"Brotopia", where hot recruiters make sure the country's best techiesget anything they want to sign on the dotted line. Still, Olivia risks itall-including her heart-to be a company star and get what she is after. Buthaving gone from eco-warrior to dot-com fly girl, perhaps a little too easily,means dealing with some seriously irrational expectations. With the investorsgrabbing her assets and the star candidate holding out for more than justmoney, Olivia must decide how far she'll go to bring an extinct tree back tolife.
261 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 12, 2021
2 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 12, 2021
As Bill Gates's divorce has gotten intertwined with Jeffrey Epstein, Recruited is a satirical look at the sexism of the tech world. Olivia is a soon to be graduated Dartmouth student who has made a late decision not to apply to med school and instead wants to save the environment. Unsurprisingly, Olivia quickly learns that it's hard to both pay off student loans and save the environment as a recent college grad. Instead, Shse falls into a job recruiting coding talent for a hot company that creates software that everyone want to invest in but no one ever talks about what the new software actually does.
Olivia quickly discovers that her new life is essentially to be a sorority social coordinator in a place where it's Friday night 24/7 seven days a week. It turns out that the computer nerds worked so hard so they could live out a fantasy of having the perqs most recently reserved for wealthy jocks; Olivia's job is to feed that fantasy by being more honey trap than savvy evaluator of talent.
Lauren Anderson has a gift for setting, one which manages to make the excesses of the tech recruiting world both outrageous and believable, sort of Devil Weard Prada does software. Her portrait of the seductress being unwittingly seduced by a culture that values flash over conscience is deftly drawn. The serpent in the garden character who keeps drawing her further to the dark side is also wonderfully slimy. It's a fleeting glance at the sexism within the world of high tech, but it's a revealing one.
Olivia quickly discovers that her new life is essentially to be a sorority social coordinator in a place where it's Friday night 24/7 seven days a week. It turns out that the computer nerds worked so hard so they could live out a fantasy of having the perqs most recently reserved for wealthy jocks; Olivia's job is to feed that fantasy by being more honey trap than savvy evaluator of talent.
Lauren Anderson has a gift for setting, one which manages to make the excesses of the tech recruiting world both outrageous and believable, sort of Devil Weard Prada does software. Her portrait of the seductress being unwittingly seduced by a culture that values flash over conscience is deftly drawn. The serpent in the garden character who keeps drawing her further to the dark side is also wonderfully slimy. It's a fleeting glance at the sexism within the world of high tech, but it's a revealing one.
August 15, 2022
Amazing read!
July 29, 2021
Reviewed for Chick Lit Central (www.chicklitcentral.com)
Even though I knew where Kava Tech was headed, considering it’s a start-up from the late nineties, reading about Olivia’s experiences as she works her way through the high-speed, overly excessive lifestyle that represented the young tech companies of forever ago felt exhilarating and manic. The contrast between this peaceful, peace-loving, earthly character, who is then pushed into living a vastly different life than she’s used to, was at times disorienting, but in the best of ways. The reader is right there with Olivia, working 18+ hour workdays while she busts everything she has to do the best job she can, all in an attempt to get back to her roots. At times, it was inspiring, yet at other moments, tragic.
Along the way, Olivia finds who might be relationship material--yet, is he really? It seems so much of what she sees in silicon jungle appears to be too good to be true. The fancy cars, company credit cards with substantial credit limits, and the constant “work hard, play hard” ethic can only take her so far, and she constantly questions whether it will ever be enough for Kava Tech, for the man she thinks she’s falling for, and ultimately, for herself. I could see at the start of the book that Olivia comes into Kava Tech with rose-colored glasses, and gradually, the rose-colored glasses lose their tint, maturing her.
She’s battling to get to the top, and as the synopsis mentions, there are a lot of irrational expectations that are thrown at her. With double standards in tow, I wasn’t sure where Olivia would end up...or with who...or how long she felt she’d be able to handle this overly excessive lifestyle. It was consistently interesting and engaging, from start to finish, filled to the brim with that special nineties nostalgia I love so much. It was a well-deserved, five-star read!
Even though I knew where Kava Tech was headed, considering it’s a start-up from the late nineties, reading about Olivia’s experiences as she works her way through the high-speed, overly excessive lifestyle that represented the young tech companies of forever ago felt exhilarating and manic. The contrast between this peaceful, peace-loving, earthly character, who is then pushed into living a vastly different life than she’s used to, was at times disorienting, but in the best of ways. The reader is right there with Olivia, working 18+ hour workdays while she busts everything she has to do the best job she can, all in an attempt to get back to her roots. At times, it was inspiring, yet at other moments, tragic.
Along the way, Olivia finds who might be relationship material--yet, is he really? It seems so much of what she sees in silicon jungle appears to be too good to be true. The fancy cars, company credit cards with substantial credit limits, and the constant “work hard, play hard” ethic can only take her so far, and she constantly questions whether it will ever be enough for Kava Tech, for the man she thinks she’s falling for, and ultimately, for herself. I could see at the start of the book that Olivia comes into Kava Tech with rose-colored glasses, and gradually, the rose-colored glasses lose their tint, maturing her.
She’s battling to get to the top, and as the synopsis mentions, there are a lot of irrational expectations that are thrown at her. With double standards in tow, I wasn’t sure where Olivia would end up...or with who...or how long she felt she’d be able to handle this overly excessive lifestyle. It was consistently interesting and engaging, from start to finish, filled to the brim with that special nineties nostalgia I love so much. It was a well-deserved, five-star read!
October 8, 2021
As a CS major who graduated from college in 1998, I was impressed by how well Lauren captured the essence of the recruiting experience at that time.
April 23, 2023
Written by a local Medford mom - Recruited is the perfect summer beach read. A bit on the salacious side so not kid friendly. Sucks you in right away and you won’t want to put it down!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews