Two Pittsburgh tech companies recently went old school with their latest attempts to recruit employees.

Carnegie Robotics and Duolingo put up billboards.

"Own a home. Work in tech. Move to Pittsburgh," reads a billboard that Duolingo put up Thursday along a busy highway in San Francisco.

Our first billboard in US-101 in San Francisco!

A post shared by Luis von Ahn (@luisvonahn) on Mar 22, 2018 at 1:33pm PDT

Carnegie Robotics put up a billboard along Route 28 featuring a friendly looking robot and the message, "We're still hiring humans."

"All we hear about is robots taking people's jobs," said John Bares, president and co-founder of Carnegie Robotics, who thought the billboard was a fun play on words that also got the company's message out there. "We're actively hiring and recruiting in a tough market."

Interested in working on robots with humans? Check out Carnegie Robotics! @CRLBots #hiring #jobs #robotics #software #mechanical #systems #electrical #engineering #Roboburgh https://t.co/IwOpGA1V1j pic.twitter.com/JL8NifW7P4

— Jackie Erickson (@jackie_erickson) March 23, 2018

Bares, who returned to Carnegie Robotics in August after helping Uber start its Advanced Technologies Center and self-driving car program in Pittsburgh, said he knows that people don't go looking for billboards when they are job hunting, but he hoped the message would stick and cause people to investigate the company. Bares said the company saw a slight increase in applications while the billboard was up and some people noted when applying that they had seen it.

The electronic billboard was placed on Route 28 near the interchange with Route 8. Bares knew it was a place where people were often stuck in traffic. The billboard was up for a month from mid-February to mid-March and the company is exploring what to do next, including putting the billboard elsewhere in the Pittsburgh region and extending the campaign nationally.

Duolingo is also looking for top tech talent with its billboard and hopes the lure of owning your own home brings people from San Francisco to Pittsburgh.

"A lot of our staff who move to Pittsburgh from other cities mention housing costs as a factor in their decision," Duolingo spokesman Michaela Kron said.

Kron said Duolingo picked San Francisco because of its concentration of tech talent and high housing prices. Pittsburgh's median home value is $132,000, while San Francisco's is $1.29 million, according to Zillow.

Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn told VentureBeat that one employee who moved from the Bay Area bought a house in Pittsburgh almost immediately.

"He said he never would have been able to do that before, but here in Pittsburgh, he found a reasonably priced home on a large plot of land and jumped on the opportunity to be a homeowner and have a huge yard for his dog," von Ahn said.

The Duolingo billboard is expected to stay up for a month.

Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com, 412-336-8448 or via Twitter @tinynotebook.

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