I am one of those people who loves change and trying new things.  I like to learn for the sake of learning.  I love meeting people who do things that I never even knew existed, and could never do myself.  Because of my explorer tendencies, I’ve gotten to know of a lot of companies and organizations that are amazing and fascinating and that I would love to be part of, but do not have the personality, skills set, or knowledge to be hired.  Sometimes it’s because they build their teams very specifically and have little to no turnover; sometimes it’s because they need very specialized experience; sometimes it’s a location issue;  and sometimes it’s because their working style is not a match with mine.

Because I love learning about all sorts of people and groups, I find a lot of companies and organizations that are simply not a professional match for me (even if I might wish they were).  However, I know that there are many good people who ARE a good match, and who would love to know about these groups.

For myself, I have several that I love:

Basecamp is one of my favorites.  I love them not only because I use and love their product, or because CEO Jason Fried has the most reasonable approach to work, business, and technology, but because he routinely supports other people and champions ideas that create a better life balance.  They are small, have little to no turnover, and focus on small teams of engineers and designers.  As I am neither an engineer or designer, I mostly just follow, read his blog (which is amazing),  and dream.

Zappos is utterly fascinating to me, with their implementation of  holocracy and work towards becoming a teal organization.  I, personally, would love to work in that sort of system, but I’m not willing to move to the desert to do it.  While I love few things more than moving to new places, I’ve spent enough time in deserts to know how much I don’t like living in them.

Hootsuite is another of my favorites, and not only because I’d love to move to and work in Vancouver (it’s one of many places on my “dream places to live”).  As a B Corp and a global company, it checks many of my preferred working environment boxes.

There are many others, including some that I’ve worked for in the past, such as  Medecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders (the single most amazing working experience of my life) and some that I’ve applied to in the past, but my skills/background are not what they are looking for, such as Jellyvision and The Nerdery.

So, here’s my question for all of you today:  What companies or organizations do you love that are not looking for your skills, but that others should know about?  Please also mention WHY you think they are great places.