How to hire if you’re not Google or Facebook, don’t hire from google or facebook

Google announced recently how much investment they put into recruiting – how they handled their talent. If there’s anything to take away from that its that you have to work on your own startups branding in 3 ways:

1) founder story

2) compelling story

3) A job description that talks 90% about what you can offer your potential new employee not what skills you are demanding. Include a particularly challenging problem the person is likely to deal with, these guys want something to stick their teeth into. Talk about new tech they could be using and get exposure for.

Above all in these times, be flexible – you aren’t going to be able to poach someone awesome in a few weeks that will take months, even a year in some cases before they are willing to seriously talk about a career change. In the meantime don’t sit around and wait.

Not having a lead developer can hinder the chances of taking on some awesome newbies, out of school, out of bootcamps.

Startups with the resources are hiring a certain segment of dev bootcampers out of the gate – who are they picking?

1) Folks who have already been programming and have experience

2) folks who were say in more traditional roles such as regular engineering or a different vertical sector and took a career change and continued to code on their own, worked on side projects, wrote blogs on their experience. – these guys are being snapped up as interns by some big names, not all dev bootcampers were ex teachers, or accountants attempting to take a drastic career change. The most promising are those who go to expand their knowledge and you can see it as an educational and career progression not this leap into the unknown. The profiles look very difficult. I’ve often seen them return and also go further into entrepreneurial bootcamps. Great thing with these guys is to acknowledge and be ok that they may want to start their own company so why not learn on the job.

Im hiring right now for Ruby devs(which is actually constant – but differs from client to client, and i’ve got the toughest job because it is an immediate need and I have to juggle building a pipeline for the company as well as try and reactive recruit ruby which is fairly impossible. I don’t have a huge budget for this one.

What i’m going to do is push for a lead to be taken on, then thrown in some really bright, intelligent hard working and quick learning developers even with javascript, who have expressed a clear interest in working with Rails. I just have to rigorously check that they really are up for the challenge –  this is a vertical learning curve. (and i have to run it past the founder – BUT be strong and confident and make them listen – otherwise that req is going to still be open in 6 months.

Its a great chance to shape the employees you have and grab them before they simply ignore any recruiting emails.

Last comment – don’t poo poo dev bootcamp just make your criteria selective, dev experience, contributions, blogs, dev bootcamp followed by side projects, and they are already in tech.

The trend is that if you have a lead, its likely to be that hiring experienced boot camp grads (if sourced properly) with the right background  will still allow production deadlines to be met, they learn on the job and are shaped by you. Take 2 for the job of one – it’ll get done in time. They will want to work for you because few places can offer any training at all. I’ve noticed that once they’ve had 6 months interning, they end up getting snapped up by the big boys in series B and C – so this is a trend worth paying attention to

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

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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.

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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.

Everyones looking for the same thing!

 Ok so you are on the right track, Angel Funding, The pitch went down well, VC’s are investing in your company, VC Partners, advisors and board members get involved. Your VC will talk strategies including hiring your team. They may or not leave it up to you after all you’ve probably been working with developers for most of your career and know plenty of guys/gals you have worked with who are awesome and you know will make a great team and who are willing to work and be passionate about the company/product as much as you are. What do you do next when you have run out of referrals and recommendations. How can you possibly find the people as passionate as those you know, how can you find your next Lead Ruby Developer or Python Developer when there are at least 15 other companies wanting to hire the same people and they are all fast growing, well funded start-ups , how do these people decide who to reach out to.

I did a quick search on Indeed to see how many start-ups are looking for senior Ruby Developers just as an example, the figures are a lot more than I thought – in excess of 20 companies in San Francisco and Bay Area. How can you stand out, how are you going to attract these candidates to your company when everyone seems to be offering the same. All Start-ups have a new innovative product or a product that is on the market but vastly improved, perhaps your start up is opening into a totally new market.

The key to attracting the best developers is a fairly simple task but laborious. Its very important to develop a candidate pipeline, when I talk about candidate pipeline I don’t mean someone finding you random resumes on various job sites, these people invariably are probably jumping from job to job, they have time to trawl the job sites (probably while they are still at work) and apply. If you are using agencies this is even worse, the developers are spoken to for maybe 15 minutes max, key word search, they probably don’t remember who they have been put forward to, and by the time you may want to interview they’ve already accepted an offer at your arch nemesis’s company!

The best and only way to do this is having someone within the company who has the ability to do a real dig into developers who are rather incognito, who hate agencies, who probably find their own jobs and have their own connections, they don’t need an agency to get them a job and they don’t trust agencies anyway. There is a different approach with these guys and gals, expressing interest in their career even when they are not interested in a move, they maybe in 6 months time. Job descriptions can be a little limited only showing responsibilities and skills needed and a “are you interested” – well probably not. That first email or conversation is crucial, done right you are well on the way to a good hire, if its done wrong, then you’ve potentially lost a great candidate who was approached the wrong way. These guys aren’t so interested in the money aspect (of course its important) but in my experience they are looking for the potential and the opportunity to have some major accomplishments under their belt especially once your product has been developed and has gone through to market or implementation – big plus points!

You or your VP of Engineering may have time to go to networking events, but time is not always there, this is a great place to start, and if there is a delegated person to recruit – send them out to each and every meetup and networking event, collect names and more names, search them, find github codes, find websites, how passionate are they about development, how active are they in their programming community. These are the ones you want to focus on, and again salary and equity is not the only factor, the company and product often is a factor and what kind of accomplishments they are set to achieve. Once you have this you are in much better position to offer them something that they really want.

You may already know all these things, execution is the hardest part and can take a long time to hire someone when you have little time to focus on this as the product and the business road map are the top priority and you may only want to hire when the exact person comes along.

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 or let me know any challenges you are facing I’ll do my best to help!

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