The opinions expressed by contributors are of their own.
It has always been difficult to expand a startup team. Before new people are allowed into the team, founders have to take into account many factors. Pressure from investors makes this worse.
The current situation makes it more difficult to hire.
The shortage of immigrant workers in IT broke established market rules.
It's not unusual for founders to have startup-related difficulties, but now they have to hire remotely to transform their business.
The classic hiring methods have changed.
There is a myth of talent shortage.
Recruiters in my community say that the market is boiling over because of too many new offers and not enough professionals to respond to them. Hundreds of new applications are received weekly by me on my platform.
There is a skills shortage. Maybe the lockdowns kept people from going to courses or they just got used to the vacation. Most people expect to get a salary over $200k, but rarely do their skills match their expectations.
Non-technical founders should get an advisor who can interview the candidates. They will give the right tasks, check the performance and figure out the candidates' real knowledge of infrastructure and coding languages. This is necessary for two reasons, the first being that the Founders will prepare the right offer and the second being that they will have appropriate expectations for the work of the coders.
There is a virtual job fair for programmers in Mexico.
Job description.
If you don't want to get lost in this hiring melting pot, make sure your job description really describes what you're looking for. It should not be too general, or combine a few positions in one unless specified as a temporarily 2-in-1 role.
If you need a visionary leader, as opposed to a worker who only follows set tasks, you should distinguish the two roles.
A professional recruiter can help you write a comprehensive job description. If you don't want it to go to outstaffing agencies, you can delegate it to them.
There are levels of ability.
Now that you know what you can offer and what you should expect from the candidate, put the job description on various platforms. The junior developers' profiles are first, followed by the more experienced software engineers.
Junior programmers are good for startup's led by full-stack developers, where the CTO can teach, correct and navigate fresh hires until they become mature coders. Junior's learn everything they need and move to another company within 9 months.
Middle to senior developers are hard to find. Retaining them is more difficult. They can be good advisers for your product development, but they will bring biases and culture from previous jobs.
If you want to set up the company culture for remote or hybrid teams, you could ask for advice from recruiting agencies or serial entrepreneurs.
I quit my job as a computer programmer after 17 years. It was paid off.
Where to find the programmers.
Art and science combine to make up the Sourcing developers.
Buy software to manage job applications. If it does contain a feature that would help you coordinate job postings on all the platforms you have chosen, check it out.
It will become very time-Consuming if you don't set up the optimal process for hiring at the beginning. If you make one wrong step, your employer brand reputation will suffer, scaring all cool programmers away from your startup.
You probably know about the traditional job posting platforms. I want to highlight a couple of new platforms.
There are startup job websites.
Staffing companies cover everything from a legal and financial perspective. You only do interviews with developers that are considered to be good and sign an agreement with the company that controls all the deliverables.
Online schools have young and talented programmers that graduated from boot camps.
Hackathons, marathons and conferences will work well if you organize a meetup for developers that are free of charge. The Neuralink demo held in August 2020 was the top hiring event.
Look for specialists that have experience with the remote lifestyle. Digital nomads and engineers who have worked in autonomously environments are your primary target.
Good programmers can be hard to keep.
Think about what they want or need.
Working on interesting projects.
A vision for their career growth.
A schedule that is flexible.
high-quality equipment.
A development infrastructure is connected with a product manager, designer, customer support, sales and legal support.
Group retreats and team building are over. Give your employees choices and flexibility.
Sharing a mission, the same culture and work attitudes should be key to finding developers. Flexible schedules and engaging tasks will make them happy.
If you see that you can't cover all of these aspects at your current stage, then you should hire professional recruiters or delegate it to HR.
Does that smart new software work?
