Saturday, August 23, 2014

Recruiting Senior Software Developers

There is a lot of demand for the limited supply of senior software developers in the world. My colleagues and I get several messages a week from recruiters, and many of them are laughably poor attempts to attract our interest.

How can they believe that we would leave our wonderful jobs because of health insurance, or an office "fully stocked with snacks"? I'm not sure I know a single developer without health insurance, and so many startups offer snacks that snack delivery is a booming industry!

What about the recruiters who do manage to convince a developer to write back? They often forget to build a relationship and keep the candidate's interest. Instead they lose sight of the person they're trying to push through "The Process".

How can this be? It doesn't make sense to compete for limited resources in such a half-hearted way. Those guys with the big beards wouldn't start an Alaskan gold mine with plastic beach shovels and a kitchen colander! Recruiting is an expensive activity, especially when the rest of the team should be focused on building a product. There is more to hiring good developers than sending LinkedIn form letters, scheduling interviews, and writing job requirements.

I wrote an essay about this for the Business of Software Blog: "Your Minimum Viable Recruiting Process". Give it a read if your company is trying to recruit developers, or engineers of any type. You'll learn what it's like to slog through the industry-standard recruiting process. You'll see how your shrewdest competitors are snagging the top talent.

If you want to hire an app developer, I can help.

If you enjoy the read, consider signing up below. I'll send an occasional entertaining email on how to improve your recruiting process. I will occasionally send you early access to drafts of my essays on the topic.