When is the right time to hire a technical recruiter?

This post has been prompted by one of 3 founders of a b2b startup, well funded and just finalizing series A funding.

Snapshot:

15 employees, 3 founders, 1 technical. Cross functional teams in sales, engineering, ops.

Currently using a database that one of the funding VC’s provided and still using their network. They all want to keep their hands in recruiting but want to focus on improving by introducing metrics into their recruiting, finding the best sources, ways to find each pipeline of candidate. They do not want to offshore development or any other functions.

 

The technical co-founders question was “when is the right time for us to hire a technical recruiter?”

I posed the question back – when was it the right time for you to hire your lead developer? As soon as he no longer had time to code and it affected development of their product.

I use the same terms back when discussing when and if to hire a recruiter. When you and your team can no longer manage on top of your workload and when it is hindering growth of your company and product.

A scattered recruiting approach that uses your network and has resumes stored in everyones email and personal folders, using google docs to track (if that!) – will get you so far, then you will fall behind, recruiting will take months and months rather than weeks.

Yes now is the time to hire a technical recruiter.

So where do you go to hire a tech recruiter

1) ask your network

2) ask your funding VC’s if they can recommend anyone they have worked with

3) you could put an ad out on craigslist, indeed, monster, linkedin. you are likely to get a huge response to your posting

How do you know if they are any good

1) get a track record, look for references and other startups the recruiter has worked at

2) ask for stats, fill ratio, how long it took them to ramp up and whether it was in the time frame

3) ask them about requirements gathering and working with the internal team – so they have the ability to not only recruit, but to improve on processes, assess recruiting software and tools and be able to suggest the best ROI tools for your company

4) do they have a network of candidates

5) can they build up candidate pipelines.

6) what other abilities do they have on top of heads down recruiting. As a start up as much as you’d like a developer to wear multiple hats, you’ll want a recruiter who can do the same. Recruit for non tech positions, be able to work in a leadership capacity and provide push back to management so that they get the job done.

Hiring an unqualified recruiter will be a total waste of money and they won’t know or be able to improve

My biggest piece of advise is take some time here. Hire the best, even if its on contract – most independent recruiters will totally accept a contract or contract to hire position.

The key here is you want an expert as your first lead recruiter, no different to hiring your first lead developer. After key processes, tools and best practices are put in place you can go on to hire more junior recruiters to do a lot of the grunt work.

This question sparked me to do some research to see if there are actually any resources or agencies where you could hire a technical recruiter – as i suspected there aren’t any, which surprised me.

For me hiring a tech recruiter or salesperson are probably the easiest jobs i could fill, so why am i not connecting the two, would it be useful for startups to be able to go and hire a technical recruiter from a very reliable resource where they already come with the tools, processes, and software they need to do the job from day one. This was a great idea for the company i mentioned above. His concern is that he didn’t know whether the position would be fulltime, he thought he needed to hire 15 employees in 8 months but what if they wanted to stop at 5 then what. I suggested getting in a contract recruiter, and i’ve suggested doing the recruitment analysis, proposing tools and software, hiring the tech recruiter and putting them onsite for a contract length with weekly updates. With a small add-on, I offered him use of the recruiting software licenses that I buy yearly – linkedin recruiter is under $10K thats a lot to shell out if you don’t know you’ll have someone using it all year round, so I thought why don’t I get extra licences from my own subscriptions and mitigate the costs. In essence you get a less senior recruiter, for a contracted time, you don’t have to fork out $20-30K on recruiting software and you can rapidly hire as you go into series A. The recruiter is the execution piece. It turned out to be a highly cost effective solution.

If you have any suggestions or ideas please post. I’m interested in feedback  – this may be a great stop gap for many startups in the same situation.

Till next time. Hope you all had a glorious memorial day weekend, I took time off after a very long time and spend the weekend on my partners boat, not sure i’m back in the swing of things today – but getting there!

 

How do i find Talent when we’re hustling for funding?

This is relevant to all early stage, bootstrapped startups and those who are lucky enough to be accepted into an accelerator program such as Y-Combinator, 500startups (where I mentor).

Based on a lot of sessions with founders who have needed to hire when they are still fund raising, have little or no money to pay someone, including an engineer who’s hungry and building your product in his mothers basement for nothing but a hope of an awesome career.. This may seem absolutely impossible and also please bear in mind, this is only ok if you are truly bootstrapped, i would not advise getting into a salary war once you grow and have funding, this is should only be a temporary measure don’t push salaries down if you can afford it.

 

I talked to two guys this last week that impressed me so much. One of the companies had just been accepted into 500startups, a founder, 1 engineer and another co-founder. The founder i met with wanted to hire engineers, his remit was that he wanted someone young, hungry and willing to learn and work hard. He didn’t believe in hiring someone with a CS degree and felt like a self taught individual would work well for his startup. His ideas way surpassed my own advice to him. When you are bootstrapped you have to be creative. So this is the guy who convinced a 21 yr old to work on building his product for 6 months where he lived in his mothers basement and wasn’t paid apart from some nominal costs. So how did he do it, can this repeated in a process. I thought about this – and it can’t, because its the human aspect, however there are qualities that these type of founders possess that make it more likely that they will always hire creatively and the best. I’ll call him Lucas for now. He’s charming, charasmatic, has a great style, calm and confident rolled into one.  He’s a born hustler, but nice about it. I’m like a broken record with this “create a compelling story” Its as much about selling yourself. He could’ve convinced me to work for nothing!

 

The other founder, I’ll call him Adam hired a developer and just paid his rent and living costs – he also was charming, charasmatic and a born socialiser  – he will never have trouble hiring. he was applying to accelerator progams and had no outside funding.

 

Luckily those of you reading this may have not had to deal with working in a corporate environment. When you interview for job, the key things that any good employee will look for is qualities of the person you are going to be working for. The best employees are ones that have a huge respect for you, like and admire you, want to be like you one day. If you can sell that you have the abillity to convince a potential engineer to work for you then start being creative. They are also more likely to have loyalty to you which is rare in the tech workspace these days.

 

I just hired an employee, he’s 26 yrs old – I pay him $500/month to work on my social media, scheduling, appt making, dealing with phone calls, researching articles, dealing with tech issues, basically everything else but not getting me coffee, actually he does and organizes my work life so its smooth and i can focus on core business issues without him i would not have enough time in the day- how did i get him to work for so little. Well i’m sales person at heart. I’m very transparent as a Founder. The reason he works for me and still is – becuase i did create a compelling story, he sees the potential of the business, and I talked to him extensively about what he wants out of his career. As time goes on i introduce further aspects of the business that are more crucial. He’s a complete tech nut now – finding out that he has ambitions to grow and eventually have the ability to be a Senior Advisor who then takes over my role of hiring and training new employees – he wants to be the boss, and i’d like to take a step back. I find empowering individuals goes a long way and if you are bootstrapped its the only way to go.

Now i have a developer who is working on a recruiting product for me – her comments to me were i’ll work for you for as much as you can pay. this is music to my ears, i will reward all my employees and they know it.

You know you have a great product, you see the potential, you have ambitions to grow the company and hopefully one day go IPO – get that excitement going.

 

If that isn’t an option or doesn’t work, not everyone can do that, its a personality thing. My suggestions are to contact your own alumni, contact school careers who can for no cost provide really strong young developers who will be eager to learn.

 

When The VC Asks: About Your Hiring Plan

When The VC Asks: About Your Hiring Plan.

Little or no budget quality hiring

A few blogs ago I wrote about recruiting on a budget, I mentor 500startups portfolio of companies and the first batch all have the same issues as any startup in the tech space. Hiring engineering talent to a small startup with no brand awareness.

I gave a talk to about 20 startups in SF. All these startups are on a 3 month accelerator program, by the second month they should be fixing up funding and looking to make their first few hires.

I did a quick survey to see what various startups were doing to hire, and these were the answers that were hollered at me;

1)      Linkedin

2)      Angel list

3)      Craigslist

4)      Website

5)      Current network

So a show of hands proved what I already knew, everyone of these companies was using the same resources to hire the same type of people. I wrote a blog about this a few months back, “everyones looking for the same thing”. What does that mean, well all these companies are contacting the same small pool of people, so anyone who actually proves qualified has already been called a dozen times and then some (from agencies and outside 3^rd party recruiters). Speed is of the essence if you don’t call them first someone else will nab them.

I asked for a show of hands of people who would apply for their own company jobs via the current job description and method of advertising. There was a little light laughter of recognition that went round the room. They wouldn’t – why because more often than not, a job descriotion at this stage may comprise of a few lines and the rest is in the CTO’s or lead engineers head, or you have a job description but half of it is full of demands for the candidate, a laundry list of skills but not a lot about the job, the company or the founders, why would the top talent even look at you when your job description looks like the other 20 that landed in their inbox today.

I usually keep the skills to a minimum and list these along with benefits at the bottom. At this stage in your startup – salary is not what’s going to sell and it isn’t all about money its whether someone can say “I built that”

If you don’t have much money for hiring, advertising, holding events or man power then you have 3 strong selling points that will increase the effectiveness of the methods above

1)      Founders story/bio

2)      Company ethos, why it came about, you plan to have a full development team in the US, you’re a software house, initiatives they are likely to be a big part of

3)      A compelling story about your product

These 3 key points are unique to each and every company – a job description will look the same, a startup sounds like any other startup, but the 3 points are where you can sell your uniqueness and attract talent and increase response rate.

When I mentioned these things, immediately the light bulb went on. “so it’s the same as when we are trying to find investors and customers?” – da ding! Yes its exactly the same – you are already using these methods and skills, use them in recruiting. Its cold calls, selling your company, developing relationships with top talent, keeping a track of your candidates, follow up calls and discussions.

I advise to whittle down a small list of very qualified talent you want on your team – call it a fantasy development league. Find out everything about them. Yes you know they work at Youtube or twitter and you assume they wouldn’t dream of working at your company. COMPELLING STORY and a job description that reads like a dating profile – what you have to offer them. Career growth, opportunities, work they will get involved with, technology changes you are likely to make, developments in the company, future company plans, how they can fit in. Plans for the development team, what they are likely to build and own. BUT don’t have your first interaction offering them an awesome opportunity at your awesome startup. Instead engage with them on their interests, check out stuff they are working on, some side tech interests they have, anything where you can start an informal conversation admiring their work. Take plenty of notes, make this really personal and make sure the founder is the one who is seen to be following them and most interested in engaging with them. Whoever in the company is best at selling the company – the guy who does the successful pitches!

Do this alongside your current methods, there really are very few free or inexpensive recruiting tools or methods however re-engineering your job description or creating from scratch, going to meetups/hackathons to talk to candidates in a different setting and often very informal. If you want to meet specific people who are influencers in the community, follow them and go to their next event, speaking engagement, whatever it is and find them. Networking events aren’t as casual and easy as one likes (I hate them personally) . This way you go with a purpose and a couple of people you really need to meet, rather than randomly walking around the room hoping to bump into the right person.

Try these simple techniques with your current methods and if you get it right, this should increase the number of qualified candidates that are applying, reduce the number of unqualified candidates and will speed up the current method.

This blog is purely intended for little or no money hiring. Making the most of what you have.

First few hires…

1)      Utilize your mentors, VC’s and your network to get referrals – referrals are still by far the best way to recruit.

2)      Are you listed on angel list – if so, post your job. You will get applications, a lot from junior candidates, but a few gems come your way. You will get a clear indication whether someone is actively looking or not but again it may not be the best talent pool. There is a search facility here, the search terms need a little work on.

3)      Trial out recruiting software and try and wangle 2 weeks trial for niche sourcing and recruiting software. Bearing in mind that most aggregated job boards and job vs resume matching sites will produce poor results for tech/engineering roles.

4)      Social recruiting has now become easier and quicker than ever. People aggregators do the job of about 5 sourcers who’s primary job is to scour the internet, create custom search engines, find candidates that aren’t readily visible or have a low internet profile, or those not wishing to be on linkedin. Ideally this should be used in conjunction with other methods of sourcing

5)      If you need Ruby, Python, Ios Mob developers, UI/UX – bite the bullet advertise on niche sites, and use a people aggregator. Meetup boards are dodgy to post jobs on and rarely will people respond unless you are the CEO/Founder and it’s a personalized message.

6)      Don’t rely on just one source and be surprised if you wade through a load of candidates and maybe one or two you can interview and declined offers – you are looking in the wrong place. Supplement your sources of candidates from at least 4-5 different sources.

7)      The double edged sword for any fledgling startup is that you want the best talent, those at linkedin, google, Heroku, square and so on, can you really attract this type of talent – well most startups in this state struggle with this, so you have to set your sights on a more realistic level – which group of developers are you able to attract. If you are seed funded startup and you have your eye on a great developer at a different company – however they received series A or series B funding – are they going to want to move, probably not.

8)      Aim high – there’s no point procrastinating about who to contact, whether they may or may not respond, whether you have formed an opinion and convinced they don’t want to move so you don’t approach them – this is a big mistake. Don’t approach them with a direct opportunity now, talk to them, build a solid relationship with them, they need to get to know you and you them. This is a long term plan to attract better talent in the future

9)      Be very clear in your job description – whats in it for them, what will their career progression be, what will they spear head, how is the opportunity better than the one they are in now – don’t get stuck on salary too much.

10)   Use google docs to track your applicants and be strict with it!

11)   Whatever you do don’t use an inexperienced recruiter/office manager to reach out to developers in SF bay area!

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

Recruiting Challenges: Hiring Developers Pt 2

Hiring developers is a whole chapter and probably the largest chapter from a recruiting perspective. I’m going to break it down into parts and at least start covering some base points to which you can start from.

1) sourcing developers – Sourcing techniques; internet, database, meetup sites, meetups/hackathons , social media – including linkedin recruiter, company website, from job postings

2) Job descriptions – what and what not to put

3) recruiting developers – hiring and retention, keeping the talent interested in your company first

4) talking to developers – the initial phone screen, what if you’re not a developer

1.   Sourcing Developers

Strategy

Create a strategy first – don’t shotgun it, advertise everywhere, all over linkedin, don’t go posting it on the ruby meetup site and hope for the best!

If you are starting from scratch ie this is your first bunch of hires for the initial engineering team, I am not going to lie, i am not going to sell you the secret to hiring developers because there isn’t a secret formula. There’s a huge amount of work you need to do to get this first team in place especially if you do not have an engineering network.  I thought i’d start from this point – how do you become your company’s best engineering recruiter?

The first thing I would do if being asked to look for a team of developers is to make sure everybody is clear on the timing for this, set realistic expectations, if this is your first round of official hires and you don’t get a lot of inbound resumes the process will probably take from 4-6 months

Talk to the developers you already have – talk to the model developer employee there’s always one! Go get them coffee/lunch and get their feedback and opinion on who should be hired, what skills do they think are important, get help with terminology and some basic screening questions, how did they get hired, how did they find their current job, where else were they looking, why did they choose this start up, get a feel of personality type that will fit the team, ask their opinion on the best internet sources for finding active developers working on peer projects on google projects or github. Look up your own developers, where do you see their internet presence. Finally having a say into who joins the new team is a huge factor and is also a critical one.  Its actually better to have less skills and a better work personality than be toxic and have awesome coding skills – the latter can have bad consequences and put projects back by months, have people leaving and you starting to hire a new team again! Get them on board and ask them to share the position on their social media and other sites, presuming you have little budget to incentivize, starbucks gift cards can go a long way, your own developers inhouse see you making a real effort in getting the right team especially when you’ve made the effort to include them – internal referrals are the quickest and the best way to hire your team.

If your startup is VC backed, talk to you CEO about resources your VC might have to aid you in hiring your team. Many VC’s already have a talent acquisition director who will outline a strategic hiring plan and plop in an engineering recruiter to execute the plan. Your competition are these ex google, ex facebook engineering recruiters with solid networks – but it doesn’t take long to get there with a lot of focus. When you talk to your CEO/founder ask if they are aware if their funding company has any resources with respect to hiring, ie maybe there is a board member or advisor who specializes in hiring and recruitment. If you are the founder or CEO talk to your backing companies about hiring strategy and execution, not only do they have access to business  and other resources to grow your startup but will also have access to resources on hiring. (this is actually what i do and there are a few of us floating about Silicon Valley)

Your company may already be working with a consulting company such as Carbon5. If you have a consulting team that you are working side by side with you can do the same thing here, try and get as much info as possible, find out about their career paths, how they landed their job – was it through referrals, a specific site, where they would recommend you hire people from. Get the developers perspective, so that you start to think like a developer and how they look for their next career move. Remember you are highly unlikely to be able to hire these crucial employees through any jobsites, even linkedin recruiter is unlikely to yield good response rates in the current climate.

This is where having a research background can really help, you are getting as much info as you possibly need to put a concrete strategy in place.

Now you are armed with the following: Where your current developers came from, what sites they are active on, links with their developer buddies with similar skills, job sites they would actually use, sneaky ways to find developers on the internet that the manual didn’t tell you about!

Now go cost this out, github and stackoverflow charge to post, linkedin recruiter cost a few hundred dollars per month, what is your company doing with twitter – leverage what you have for getting postings out there, have your internal team send it out to their social networks. Work out how much time it will take to do each part of the research process, this will give you a rough idea on how long it will take you to start seeing applicants either through referrals or through responses and a rough time for how long it will take you to hire your first team member.

As soon as you get a name, email and phone number call immediately!!! i cant stress enough, you could put off a call by a couple of days and another company already interviewed them and made an offer.

There are many sourcing strategies that can spawn off what I have discussed – if you are looking for more in depth steps on internet sourcing, fill in the contact form below and i’ll send you a sourcing for developers guide(cheat sheet!)

Getting the names is only the start, advertising your position correctly is another step in sourcing and must be done correctly to produce the highest inbound resumes received, and is the subject of the next blog.

Feel free to ask me any recruiting challenges you are facing and if you want some info on a specific sourcing technique I am happy to send you material to help. mynetsol.inc@gmail.com or call 510 239 7829

Connect with me on linkedin and follow my tweets @rubybhattachary

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

Internet Sourcing, Boolean Searches – Internal Tech Recruiters – Startups

This is a quick one and one that is really important for ALL internal recruiters tech or non tech. Job sites and resume databases are limited, the amount of good developers or IT talent that actually post on the typical sites such as DICE, Monster or any other generic sites is low and will yield poor results when you search and also poor results when you advertise. Linkedin recruiter is pretty good and gets you some great talent and totally spot on HOWEVER you have to get them to connect with you. Linkedin searches I always believe are good as long as you have some way of tracking them down.

Recruiting trends reports show that the use of job sites is on the decline, linkedin isn’t quite working for you. Specific sites for advertising Ruby or any other developer jobs such as using Github, Stackflow or Ruby job sites are very costly and you have no idea whether you’ll get people to respond.

Quick and easy, use techniques that top tech companies use and smart agency recruiters. Internet sourcing is not new but digging under google’s search engine allows you to use boolean search strings to search for resumes where you include skill sets, location and any other skill.

Firstly do a quick google search on google boolean search, you should find a tool bar you can download called Recruiting Bar – the sourcers Toolbar, you need to watch a you tube video or two but its easy to work out. There are also many postings and blogs that go into a huge amount of detail with how to enter search strings into the google search bar by adding various syntax before your search string. Check out this white paper by Michelle De Rubeis of Stafflink.ca – boolean search secrets for becoming a master recruiter

A recommendation here is to join one of the groups on Linkedin  – search under boolean  – you will find a few groups. These groups are great, all members truly help each other out. I have often asked for help with a particular search string to find candidates with really specific skill sets and members will share their search strings with you. Save your search strings as you will need them later.

So what results do you get, you get resumes that are not usually found if you simply put in the search in the usual google tool bar you find resumes that aren’t readily available or out there for the general public to see, it pulls up resumes from github and other sites. You get resumes with contact details on – you’re good to go!

Recruiting is not rocket science, a little research, playing around with search strings will bring you excellent results, candidates to add to your database and a whole list of new talent that other companies and many agencies don’t have – often agencies do not have the band width to hire and have on their staff a specific internet sourcer/researcher. You really don’t have to use agencies I swear – you can do this yourself.

I am not recommending this to be the only way you source its one of many ways, its another method to be used in conjunction with other sourcing techniques.

You can find me on linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ruby-bhattacharya/1/655/818/ , my website www.mynetsolinc.com

Fill in the contact form below to receive free whitepapers that focus only on tech recruiting for startups and shoot me any burning hiring challenges you may be having.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

Technology recruitment startups – candidate care

I decided to  spend this afternoon getting my social media all squared up. Reading up on fellow bloggers concerned with the topic of recruiting tech for startups, reading about candidate experiences for internal and external recruiters. Now I think it is blatantly obvious from the amount of posts from blogs to meetup groups that recruiters are not on the Christmas card list for many tech job seekers, that isn’t a surprise.

More and more tech candidates will use search engines for their next job search or referrals. Which ever method, you have inbound resumes coming through your website which is brilliant! Ok now what?

Here’s some simple tips to make sure your company keeps a good reputation as a great place to work, a company that is highly responsive, where candidates have been so impressed that you end up with more referrals. This is ideal right? Customer Service!!!! This is the key. A few years back when I entered tech recruiting one of the first things I learned was to build candidate pipelines, talk to potential candidates, bring them in for interview – please note this was never under the guise of having a fake job! We built on this list, set call backs and kept in touch with everybody we spoke to or met on a 2mthly basis. Some agency practices that would be a huge plus to include as part of your daily routine as an internal recruiter.

1) Set up a way either via your website, or via bulk emailing or if you receive a manageable amount of resumes on a daily basis to contact each and every respondent. The biggest complaint for candidates is the “black hole” syndrome. It doesn’t feel good on the other side and puts a bad taste in their mouth. Does not encourage them to tell their fellow peers about your company.

2) If a person is rejected straight off the bat – make sure you email in a timely manner and explain some brief reasons why – I cannot begin to explain the benefits here, EVERYBODY appreciates honesty and not having false hopes.

3) If you are interested in speaking with someone, don’t wait!!!! Email and call immediately to state how much interest your company has in speaking with them and set up an informal chat or time to carry out a short phone screen. My recommendation is to bring these folks in yourself, take them to a coffee shop and do a semi informal interview to assess fit and skills. Do not wait for an agency or other startups to get in there before you, you could lose out on a valuable candidate. People appreciate quick feedback and turnaround, this creates an extremely positive impression for your company……….and the more people you do this with, the more buzz it will create. People always remember when a company treats them this way right from the start. Remember you are the front line to your company. If you have little to spend on the ever so trendy “employer branding” and very little marketing budget – this is really the best and easiest way to spread word.

4) Make sure you set up phone screens and interviews in a timely and professional manner

5) Ensure that if a person is rejected by the hiring manager that you don’t wait a week or more to inform them. When you take time out of your day to phone screen for an hour, its really important to get back to them as soon as you know. Don’t be afraid, make sure you get a solid underlying reason to why they were rejected so that the candidate has an understanding – this is still great customer service, you never know they may have a friend who is better suited and are much more likely to refer them if you are nice to them.

6) The same goes for face:face interviews. Anyone having to take half or full day off work to go through a 2+Hr interview really is owed a quick response as soon as your hiring manager makes a decision. If you know that one particular hiring manager reviews resumes at midnight, gives you 2 lines of feedback, asks to interview and you can’t get feedback for a number of days because they may have flown out of the country on business or called to deal with a mission critical situation, keep the candidate informed, or set expectations prior to the interview.

7) Finally getting a phone call and speaking to a real live human is much better than an email. On the front lines this really engages a potential candidate and its really all about psychology.

Good agencies typically do this, because if they have identified good talent and they are really suited for a job, keeping them engaged can really create a huge amount of enthusiasm for your company(or the client in the case of agencies). Another reason is that a good candidate may not be a total fit for the role you are recruiting but you know there is a position down the line that they will be suitable for so you keep in touch. Here an email every few weeks or so would suffice. This keeps them open to the opportunity that they will be first on the list of potential interviews and they know they have something coming up down the road. If they are that good and you know they are interviewing, perhaps a word in the hiring managers ear would be a good idea.

Its not easy hiring the right talent with so much competition, some simple candidate care can make a world of difference. While it may seem like an arduous task, set aside half hour at the start or end of each day to fit this in, it will pay off.

You can find me on linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ruby-bhattacharya/1/655/818/ , my website www.mynetsolinc.com

Fill in the contact form below to receive free whitepapers that focus only on tech recruiting for startups and shoot me any burning hiring challenges you may be having.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

New to Tech Recruiting at a start up?

Hi there all,

Sorry for the brief hiatus on the blogging front.

More often that not, a startup who has just received series A funding has a lot to prove, deadlines to meet, customers to satisfy, no longer in beta stage, or trialing, this time hiring is now top of the agenda. One of the key elements to the success of a startup are the employees hired, we all want the best engineering talent, we all want to develop using Ruby and RoR, we are all looking for Lead Python developers….Well if you are new to internal tech recruiting it seems fairly obvious at first. Use job boards, use social media and post your jobs there, post on linkedin, post on the company website…but now what. You have been asked to find the next Ruby Lead, or an IOS and web developer with skills you haven’t heard of, and worst of all you don’t get any responses, even worse if you do try and locate someone and call them, you could be received by a barrage of questions of who you really are, and whether you actually recruit for the company, are you there on contract and then you feel like you are the one being interviewed. Then the dreaded not interested and ‘click’. Don’t give yourself a hard time….the best recruiters can take from 2-5 years to overcome many of these issues dealing with candidates particularly in the SF Bay area. You probably have a list of hires you need to make and hopefully they have been prioritized, but now you hit a brick wall, you sadly look at the number of startups who are all offering work at the most exciting startup ever, now you may realize that the candidates are the one in the driving seat and can take or leave job opportunities, this is regardless of the increase in unemployment rate, that has little to do with IT. Maybe you have a small recruiting budget. Don’t fall down this trap……You WILL be contacted by dozens of agencies who all say they can fill your positions. This sounds brilliant, you can receive as many resumes as possible and you can sift through which ones are suitable – but how do you really know they are suitable, how knowledgeable are you on frameworks, platforms and emerging technologies and languages, what happens when the hiring manager rejects resume after resume, whats up with these agencies and why don’t i hear from them after a month or so….brick wall again. Does this sound like your situation? Next steps, you are probably being expected to put a process together that can be scaled, plenty of research into this area is needed. What is an applicant tracking system, how do i know if its anygood, how do i convince management to provide funds to implement this system, how can this help me in the long term. Creating a candidate pipeline from the hiring roadmap you have hopefully been privy to, if not get it! Look at which hires are needed when, try and get this as early as possible, look at the hires that haven’t been approved yet and segment into skills. Build those pipelines immediately, it takes on average 90 days to fill a position however in reality for the tough engineering positions it could take at least 8 months, but the CEO wants this person yesterday.

PBS – no not public broadcast service but PROCESS, BRANDING AND STRATEGY. You HAVE to sell your company, having employer branding across your social media sites, creating inbound recruiting – folks will jump at the opportunity to work at your startup.

Ok Suggestions:

1) Go to every single meetup group for the selected skill sets (no needs for certain IT positions you can probably fill them yourself) – collect business cards like crazy – make yourself a familiar face in the startup community.

2) Linkedin is a great source for talent, you can identify them however the response rate is often very poor – find alternate ways of contacting these folks, phone numbers and emails are the best. I always get feedback that personal emails go down a lot better than linked in requests.

3) Join recruiting networks, network with other recruiters, add discussion points, ask for advice and help, someone is always willing to answer your questions. You can isolate some startups that have had phenomenal success due to adopting some excellent process and systems in place – and also recruiters who are willing to work hard at understanding technology and understand the motivations of candidates and how to really create interest.

I have many many more – if you are struggling in anyway and could do with a sounding board or some free ebooks that go into much more detail email me mynetsol.inc@gmail.com or call me for a chat 510 239 7829.

Name(required)

Email(required)

Website

Comment(required)

Submit

Δ

How to attract Talent prior to funding

I’ve noticed a few start-ups are well on their way. Seed funding, various funding from sources takes you up to a good mark. You have a pilot, a trial with a client and you only have one shot. Now you need those engineers that will work hard, be passionate as you and will put their all in to get this finished. You believe in it, your fledgling team believe in it – how do you get the top talent to believe in it.

Firstly – how did you find your current developers….friends, old colleagues, referrals, people approaching you, connections networking, it goes a long way. How did you pitch your company to them, its easier when you know them, the trust is there. How do you build this trust with a developer who sits on a few offers, they are taking a huge risk joining any start up and how can you convince him/her to join your company when funding is less than a $million.

Quite honestly, this suggestion cuts me out of a job with these types of start ups, and recruiters alike, but when used with another source is highly effective.

Ok Mr CEO – I know you don’t have time, but when you have a team of 5-10 people and you have money to raise, a company to run, spending 24/7 making real your dream, however to build and grow your first engineering team takes finesse and a little time.  You still have your network to keep tapping into, you have that gift, your passion ignites people, they are excited about your product, you know you will get funding, whenever you talk to people they get excited. Keep going to specific meetups yourself, it is impossible not to be flattered to be approached by a CEO, it is highly likely they will want to continue the conversation. This approach is better than any recruiter/headhunter anyday. If the role is that important then you are the selling factor, the way you are, your approach to work, your personality. Everyone has their own favorite app but i like “unsocial” – i can be in a room full of mobile devs, ruby devs, network admins, UI people, switch this on and it tells me who’s in the vicinity and what they do, helps speed things up a bit so i’m not spending 30 minutes talking to the janitor.

Don’t get too many – but identify a specialist agency who can start a contingent search.

If you have a generalist on board you can teach them a few things. Searches in linkedin will bring up a plethora of exactly the role, experience of developer you need. Have them save the search, ideally 100-200 names. If possible have someone go through this list and identify roughly skills wise who will be a good fit. Have someone who can track down email addresses and phone numbers – just in case ( just a bit of sleuth work).

This part won’t take much time at all – if this role is so crucial. Send out a personalized email to each and every person on the list. Call them directly. There is not one person I know in the working world who would not only be flattered but are 50x more likely to engage in an opportunity with you than a recruiter.

Just some thoughts…..

You can find me on linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ruby-bhattacharya/1/655/818/ , my website www.mynetsolinc.com

Fill in the contact form below to receive free whitepapers that focus only on tech recruiting for startups and shoot me any burning hiring challenges you may be having.