How Entrepreneurs Hire Great Developers
I was sitting at a client’s christmas party, talking to their technical lead who was responsible for hiring.
“Finding talent is a huge problem for us. How are you doing it?”
I sensed the problem already, so I asked: “How many people are you interviewing for every position?”
He said “Around 5”
You should have seen his face when I said:
“We interview 50 per role.”
Now, I totally get it. Nobody has time for 50 interviews.
Especially not busy entrepreneurs.
At the same time, you cannot settle on just interviewing 5, because the risk is high to talk to 5 mediocre people.
The trick is to build a system.
A system that does the interviewing for you, where you only take the best ones.
In my newsletter I talk about the system we built, which helps us go through large numbers.
And find fitting talent for a reasonable price (using geo arbitrage. If you are an entrepreneur who is working with developers you are probably already familiar with the term).
What my client business taught me about hiring
Some of my clients are agencies.
If you haven’t worked with agencies, just know this: they are picky.
For talent, they are most picky about communication.
Why? Because they have clients themselves and normally over-promise solutions. So they need to be up to date, at all times.
For them, It’s not enough to have a developer who can code an algorithm, no.
If you are in any way like me, you are probably searching for someone who can talk.
A real human, who can code.
That agency rejected a couple of candidates who were not 100% spot on in the way they presented their solutions. Their code was fine, but it was lacking.
During that time we refined our markers for good candidates. We learned to work a lot with video and reject talent way earlier.
My aim here is to give all knowledge away for free, so that…
Anyone can learn hiring (Especially if you know business)
Just like any other business process, hiring needs to be defined and executed.
It’s not magic, it depends on 2 things:
A healthy number of leads A good qualification process
As entrepreneurs we know how important it is to work in our 80/20.
For hiring, this is not difficult at all.
First, you outsource #1 completely. And then you reduce #2 to the minimum where you are most effective.
Sounds too good to be true, but it’s actually not. Most trouble comes from not having #1, and then compromising on #2.
I have been there and seen how much trouble that can cause down the line in your business.
I’m here to help you get those 2 things solved and build a solid hiring funnel.
Again, the content is for free. I publish the best stuff on the email newsletter so I can get feedback faster and you can stay on top of things.
