What it does: It manages a transaction service platform for business owners.
Mission: “We believe all businesses should be able to participate and thrive in the economy.”
Size and presence: 8,521 employees
Best known for: Its All-in-one transaction service platform
The good bits: It offers a good salary and benefits, and it has an inclusive and diverse environment
The not-so-good bits: Sometimes, the team will be statistic driven
Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey founded Square Inc. in 2009. Square aggregates merchant services and mobile payment in a single service. It provides services that help merchants settle sales transactions. All money from transactions is deposited into the merchant bank account within two days.
The features in Square’s product allow users to track and send invoices, apply discounts, administer refunds and do many transaction-related activities. The company changed its name to Block, Inc. in 2021 while managing Square’s products. The company acquired several companies throughout its operations, including Afterpay, Cash App, Venmo, and more. The company opened its office in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and Japan. Meanwhile, the headquarter is located in San Francisco.
Square embraces diversity and inclusivity; it has a lot of diverse groups of employees, from Black Square Association, Latinx, Parents at Square, Veterans, WomenEng, Woman at Square, Neurodiversity, and many more. The company puts a severe effort into aligning its goal with its culture within the workforce, which is to build an inclusive economy where all people have equal access to opportunity.
Square’s purpose is to empower, and the company aims to do that inside and outside. Some employees stated that the company shared a strong growth mindset strategy, and the management is willing to help employees to grow professionally.
Square explains its hiring process clearly. There will be four steps in the entire process. However, a former intern claimed it might consist of several interviews in one step. The first step is an interview with a recruiter. The second step is an interview with team members; depending on the roles, the applicant will likely meet with several teammates from cross-functional partners.
The engineering roles will require applicants to take a pair-programming task. The third step is a technical test; to better understand your skill, you will be asked to provide a portfolio of your previous work. If the applicant passes all the first three steps, the process will end with the offering. The recruitment process may take six days to a month.
Square provides many opportunities for emerging talents, including students and recent graduates. The company has a variety of roles within the workforce. Square urges its interns to participate in an actual project, allowing them to take responsibility for their tasks. The company will treat interns like full-time employees, despite their status as an intern.
The mentorship program will help interns to improve their skills and take ownership of many projects. The company will place interns to work with other team members, allowing them to learn directly with the experts who will accommodate their needs during their internships.
Square conducts a university recruiting program that will hire recent graduates and students willing to join the boot camps internship programs in software engineering. Occasionally, available roles for graduates and interns are ranged from software engineering, product design, data science, hardware, and business.
The company is also willing to offer return full-time to interns who perform well, depending on their graduation time frame.
Entry-level salary ranges from CA$ 34,000 to CA$ 40,000 per year.
Square committed to investing US $100 million to support minority and underserved communities. The company also provides the opportunity for its employee to connect with volunteer and service opportunities.
With the million investment, Square handed the funds—selected by a team in Square—to help minority-owned small business to grow through finance. It allowed the company to increase the targeted small businesses to increase their capacity and provide access to financial services and tools that have been limited for them.
In 2020, The New York time reported that many users—small businesses who used Square service—complained that the company was holding the money from them at an economically vulnerable time. The newspaper wrote that the affected business owners proved they hadn’t had any returns or risk flags. It was reported that Square began to hold back 20-30% of its customers' money. It was also done with little warning.