Ask HN: Clever Recruiting Techniques?

[jack7890]

For me, the biggest surprise about running a startup has been how difficult it is to recruit top-notch engineers. It is shockingly, bewilderingly, impossibly difficult to find qualified web developers. Granted, my notion of "qualified" is discriminating, but it's been surprisingly difficult nonetheless.

I've tried all the traditional channels for finding developers: job boards, networking events, and my own personal network. It's time to get more creative. I'd love to hear about any clever techniques or tactics others have used to identify promising web developer candidates.

[andrewstuart]

Forget clever. Try providing a place people want to work, doing interesting stuff, with reasonable pay, working with smart people, with the hardware and software needed to get the job done, along with a sense of mission, excitment and purpose. Take a humble attitude to recruiting them instead of requiring people to "prove that that want to for us". Give people a job that the want to rush to in the morning to get started on. Demonstrate during the interview process that your company is smart and understands software development, by asking smart questions that reveal meaningful insights into the candidates capabilities as a coder. It's not all about you - ask them what they want - take an interest. People want jobs that make them feel a sense of mission and purpose, along with reasonable reward for their skills and experience.

[dsplittgerber]

That's very nice and how it should be.

Still,if noone knows about your ideal workplace, you're still stuck trying to differentiate your firm from hundreds of others vying for attention with all the same marketing-speak.

[roel_v]

Still this is only half of the equation. You're basically making the HR version of 'build a better mousetrap'. Which everybody who has ever build a product knows is not true - you still need great marketing to let people know about your product (job, in this case).

[enry_straker]

Speaking as someone who has started and run both small and medium-sized organizations, i would suggest the following:

1) Hire folks who exhibit good problem-solving skills and possess a good attitude. These folks usually are easily trained and become productive in a short span of time. But you have to invest in your employees - through training, through remuneration, through building an open culture.

Good leaders work with the tools they have and the people they have - not set improbable standards. You would be surprised by what people are capable of if you support them, encourage them, train them and give them room to learn by making mistakes.

2) Nowadays i usually try to find good open source developers in my area, study their code, check out their blog listings, check out their mailing list responses - and then do my best to convince them to work with me. These folks are among the BEST.

3) In the past, i have conducted coding competitions in universities and collages - and have hired many of the student participants after interacting with them informally, talking to their friends and checking out their code.

4) I would also humbly suggest that Web development has such an enormous set of great tools, books, articles, tutorials etc, that any curious and persistent person can pick up the basics in a short span of time - given the right motivation.

[buro9]

I am now using developer IRC channels to recruit.

After exhausting agencies, linkedin, and adverts I was particularly frustrated by what I had seen and the quality of who we had interviewed.

So I asked the simple question, "Where do devs hangout?". And I'm not talking bars, I'm talking those who are busy actually doing stuff, especially if it's stuff they're working on in their own time (a passion for something).

And the answer to myself was in the community channels for a given tech. For the most part this was freenode IRC rooms, but sometimes it's Google Groups.

The important thing with approaching people through these channels is not to go in cold or piss them off. But as this should be an area which you know too (or your CTO does, or other devs you have does), then you should open the dialogue in their comfort zone.

Encourage use of the channels and just watch for a bit to see who is giving answers to other people... they're the ones who know what they're doing, and they're the influencers.

Once you know who they are, ask them if they're looking for work, where they're located (timezones help here, if you're in the UK go in early in the morning and you mostly have europeans, and if you're in the US go in late as you mostly have Americans). Even if they're not looking, they may very well know someone in the channel who is looking and they will recommend a good person.

Does this method work? Yes, for me it has done.

Using HN to hire is one example of this (and we found a terrific graduate who started today), and I did the same with the android-dev IRC channel to get a great Android dev. I've also done the same with hiring a great devops guy (another IRC channel).

Basically... if you can't find them, and if you aren't doing things like airbnb (great hiring pages that go viral), red gate (giving away ipads for good interview candidates), then spend your time and effort to go where they go.

I wouldn't call this clever. It's just very basic head-hunting. But frankly that's what you're doing. Stop expecting that the good guys are out there looking for you, they're busy doing stuff... the average guys are out there looking for you.

[frisco]

The most clever I've seen so far is to start with this code:

http://github.com/mmcgrana/gitcred

and then work down the list looking for languages and frameworks of interest.

[andrewgodwin]

I saw that earlier in the year - it's a nice idea, but I can't help but think there's a significant portion of people who aren't on GitHub (for example, I have an account, but the majority of my projects are on BitBucket, mostly due to technology choices).

Still, it's certainly a reasonable initial source of people, and I would imagine you'll find that a lot of the "good" programmers who aren't in this list are only a couple of real-life connections away, at most.

[kunjaan]

Maybe it's not the technique but you, your company, your employees, your location, your pay that is turning off engineers.

[andrewstuart]

Hear hear. Perhaps not the poster specifically, but many companies wonder why they can't get good engineers but offer nothing in the areas you identify.

[brlewis]

Maybe so. One of my pet peeves on HN is people being so concerned about avoiding the appearance of self-promotion that they leave out specific information that would help the conversation.

[parbo]

I was recruited to Spotify through a programming contest. The site seems to be down, but here is the google cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

I didn't do great in the competition (67th place or so), but I suppose the main thing was to attract people who actually enjoy programming (and challenges).

A was also on an interview for Propellerhead (http://www.propellerheads.se/) in 2003 after they had a (kind of hard) programming quiz that went viral. Didn't get that gig though.

[sunkencity]

I don't consider myself the worlds best programmer, but I feel that it's kind of demeaning with a programming contest. It's like when you go to a job recruiting agency and they run all this shit IQ test shit on you. If they want you in that setting - run like hell.

If you want me, let me show you what I have done - I don't want to compete in a programming contest where the grand prize is a poorly paid job, where you are expected to work unpaid overtime and be subservient. I know my worth, and is pretty happy running my own startup business defining my own terms as I go along.

I looked at a job at klarna but the thought of spending some time re-sharpening my skills at Erlang and then spending some days doing their code challenge unpaid - not so interested. I'd rather do something else and get my moneys worth for my time. Although I'm kind of tempted for a job where I get a chance to work face-to-face with some more senior people to learn from them.

Some time though I might want to take a job, my plan to be able to skip all these silly programming contests is to have some open source projects or contributions to show. I have a couple of project that I wish I had been able to open-source, but I think that I will go by the route of contributing to some existing project. I feel that recruiting by looking at open source is a very good thing, where the interests of both employer and employee are upheld.

[parbo]

Why was this downvoted? I listed two novel ways of recruiting that got me interested. That is surely a valid response to the OP's question.

[brlewis]

Yeah, Dropbox's challenge was/is excellent.

[tomjen3]

We can't really help you much unless tell us how you define qualified.

[imwilsonxu]

How about changing your recruiting strategy from 'top' to 'potential' since it's so hard to reach top ones?

Diff from big-fat-cat company, startup has a big advantage that it's going to grow and employees can really feel it.

This is a good chance to cultivate ownership, loyalty, sense of belonging, etc.

Good luck :)

[kqueue]

You'll find tons of high quality mailing lists for whatever skill set you are looking for. Python, C etc... Read through the archive and find people that are active and provide solid answers. Get in touch with them and see how far you can go.

[woan]

Go on campus. Do a presentation with a student group, i.e. IEEE/ACM programming SIG...

Join a professional developer organization... Plenty of Linux, iPhone, Android, .Net, etc. developer groups in most major tech hubs...

[fizx]

You could always pay more.

[philk]

I'm not sure "spend more money" constitutes a clever idea.

[wazoox]

It's close to impossible to be competitive with high flyers (the Google, Microsoft, etc) when you're a small company or startup. Just imagine yourself in their shoes : would you rather work for some unknown company, with no benefits, no carrier perspective and little money, or Google? Yeah, you see what I mean. You need to take a different, peculiar approach to recruitment.

So far, my very best way to recruit was through internship. The downside is that it will take long months to get acceptable engineers, then they won't stay with you for more than a year or two once they're competent.

[pvg]

It's close to impossible to be competitive with high flyers (the Google, Microsoft, etc) when you're a small company or startup.

This is utter nonsense. There are plenty of people who aren't necessarily interested in working for Google or Microsoft. Neither does working for a startup mean little pay and neither benefits nor career prospects (assuming that's what you meant by 'carrier perspective')

[andrewstuart]

>>>then they won't stay with you for more than a year or two once they're competent.

Only true if you keep paying them like juniors and don't advance their career appropriately to their personal/professional development.

[amorphid]

You have discovered why recruiters exist.

[adsahay]

It is a really tough problem no doubt. We use interviewstreet.com to screen candidates before spending time on an interview, saves us a lot of time.

[newyorker]

How about job fairs? Social media?

[weel]

I sometimes see job ads on facebook. I have no idea if this is true in general, but in my case, I have been surprised at how good of a match they tend to be. I am not sure exactly what characteristics the employers are targeting when they set up the ad campaign, but I can guess based on the fact that one or two of the ads specifically stated that the company employed other Caltech grads (I have a BS in CS from that school).

[zumda]

Job fairs from universities are amazing places to find talent (and that cheap ;)). They aren't refined yet, but if you find the right people they are willing to learn, and are usually fast at it.

[zackattack]

how technically strong is your CTO?

[AmberShah]

I'm looking for alpha employers to find very qualified programmers through Code Anthem. Email me amber at codeanthem dot com.