MovieTickets.com: Profile of a small company

MovieTickets.com CEO Joel Cohen looks for potential employees who will fit the company’s culture. [Photo: Scott Wiseman]

Engineer Noah Orlen and MovieTickets.com came to an arrangement in September when he considered joining the online theater ticket retailer. Orlen, who had worked as a consultant several times in his career, would join the Boca Raton company in that capacity first.

“We both got to date a little bit,” says Orlen, 44, who holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering. In January he formally joined the staff, where he is executive vice president of strategic planning and product development.

Orlen has spent 22 years in Boca, has worked for prominent tech companies in south Florida and has kept up his networking with tech leaders. He already knew MovieTickets’ key players, for instance, and liked its entrepreneurial spirit, receptivity to change and investments in training. MovieTickets is owned by a joint venture of theater chains and entertainment companies and operates in 19 countries. Its staff is predominantly composed of people with technical skills. CEO Joel Cohen’s degree is in business administration.

Cohen wants people who fit the company’s culture, have a degree in computer science or engineering and at least three years of experience. Orlen’s consultancy path to a staff job was unique. The normal hiring road at MovieTickets includes job boards, phone screening of applicants for technical skills and then in-person interviews to judge fit. Though generally not a place for newly minted grads, the company recently began reaching out to Florida Atlantic University for leads on new hires. “For me, salary, benefits, all of that, are foundational,” Orlen says. “But the most important thing first and foremost is the people. They have to be energetic. They have to come to work with the right attitude because you’re seeing them more than your spouse.”