Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Ancestry.com Hiring Shows Future Plans

Ancestry.com careersI happened across Ancestry.com’s job listing site. According to one job listing, Ancestry’s employee count is 1,400. Many of the job openings look like they are expanding. And they reveal some of Ancestry’s future plans.

They are hiring scanning technicians in various places: Honolulu, Hawaii; Richmond Virginia; Toronto, Ontario; and Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas. One can only guess what records they are acquiring at those locations. Another set of scanning technician listings is for scanning technicians for two different shifts in Provo, Utah; a third shift in Provo; and a fourth shift in Provo. It’s apparent that Ancestry is scanning records in Provo from 6 am to 10 pm! These listings also indicate Ancestry is utilizing part time labor in the Provo area, which is abundant due in part to the presence of 53,000 students at two large universities.

The job listings also reveal that “while most of Ancestry's subscribers are in the US, the company has a strong presence in the UK, Canada, and Australia, and is in the process of a large international expansion into Eastern Europe and Mexico.” They are hiring a marketing manager for Mexico. They are hiring a senior manager for global marketing campaigns. Other international hires are for one employee in Munich, Germany and two in Dublin, Ireland.

As a former software engineer at Ancestry’s Provo location, I find it interesting that they are expanding their software development at their San Francisco office with ten open positions, including two Android developers.

Their ProGenealogists division seems to be doing well. They have open positions for a genealogist account manager, an associate genealogist, a genealogist research manager, and an assistant genealogist.

A variety of positions show Ancestry’s interest in expanding their direct to consumer DNA and health offerings: an epidemiologist to manage large genetics studies, a director of genomics, a clinical genomics scientist to do computational algorithms, a vice president of business development to lead licensing and partnerships, a senior data scientist, and various software development positions explicitly for AncestryHealth.

With hackers accomplishing major incursions in companies around the world, Ancestry is hiring a Chief Information Security Officer as well as a senior engineer for information security. Given Ancestry’s possession of customers’ intimate DNA data, this seems prudent. Thank you, Ancestry!

7 comments:

  1. I believe that the Virginia scanning might be of the announced release by the VA records folks. Check the news releases including the Dick Eastman blog.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "With hackers accomplishing major incursions in companies around the world, Ancestry is hiring a Chief Information Security Officer as well as a senior engineer for information security. Given Ancestry’s possession of customers’ intimate DNA data, this seems prudent. Thank you, Ancestry! REALLY? Never mind that they themselves are SELLING this intimate data.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for pointing this out. I was about to! I'm SO glad I used another testing company!

      Delete
  3. Given that Ancestry is for sale, I'm a bit skeptical about their job openings. But then I have two previous employers who used job postings placed all over the U.S. for highly unethical reasons.

    One employer, a closely held dotcom that was for sale, posted account manager job openings just before they began advertising for a buyer. They had no need for additional staff of any kind. In fact, we had been downsizing as part of an ongoing 2 year hiring freeze. They posted the openings as a ruse to appear to prospective buyers to have more robust future prospects than was actually the case.

    Another employer hired a headhunter to advertise and interview sales 'candidates' who worked for a select list of their competitors. Their sole purpose was to gather intel about how their competitors did business. Said employer never intended on hiring any new sales staff.

    FYI, today your comment system is not allowing posts using OpenId. A few days ago it also failed to post with Open ID OR my google account on your Family Search conference piece about DNA. I could not find an email address to notify you of the problem. Perhaps it is now fixed.

    ReplyDelete
  4. In every way, Ancestry is the WalMart of genealogy sites.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is something few people mention about Ancestry, and it's important. This company creates jobs. Jobs are good. Jobs in genealogy are especially good, in my opinion.

    Back in my HR consulting days, I did a lot of work with companies that were acquiring and/or being acquired. I wouldn't be too concerned about my longevity in one the positions mentioned. That's work that will need to get done no matter who owns the company.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'm also not too worked up about Ancestry hiring genealogists. After all I was one of the experts from the old Expert Connect that ancestry did away with when they decided they wanted to into the research end as well. And ProGenealogists historically won't hire anyone who isn't willing to live within the State of Utah.

    I'd be more excited about expansion is Ancestry would make sure that they can keep what they have operating properly before advancing on to other projects.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.