Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?

Primarily I would say use recruiters, either external ones (you'll have very mixed results here, be prepared to sift through a ton of barely relevant CVs), or hire a recruiter as part of your core team. Either way as a small company you're going to get very few candidates who seek you out and decide to apply, the job of a recruiter is to go out and find good candidates for you and then sell them on applying for a job with your company.

Even the very largest companies like Google and Amazon use recruiters, they just happen to have an army of them on payroll rather than going out and hiring them on a piecemeal basis from external agencies. You also say the best candidates don't call a random recruiter, and you're right, they don't. The best candidates know one or two really good recruiters who can get them interviews lined up in the next few days and an offer on the table by the end of next week.

The only other thing I've seen have some level of success is going to recruitment events targeted at the sort of people you want to hire. If you're looking for junior developers your local university will run recruitment fairs, and if you're looking for more experienced people there are a few events such as Silicon Milkroundabout (the worst name ever) where you can pay to get a stand. Either way be ready to commit whatever time you're going to be at the event itself, plus a few days to follow up with people you've spoken to.

adding this as a new comment since this is a different take.

Make yourself easily reachable.

In this instance for example, the fact that you have asked this question means you are hiring. One of the HN reader reading this could be your potential hire but for that person there's no easy way to approach you. A single link in your profile could make that happen :) Otherwise you are wasting this opportunity!

What is your competitive advantage? Do you offer 30h week? Remote work? Free luxury cars? Incredible salary? Find out what is special about working at your place.

As many have said it really depends. But for a smallish development company (under 50) there's really nothing quite like organic growth - which generally means word of mouth and/or friends (or friends-of-friends) and former colleagues. I'm from an island in the North Atlantic so although it's a 'city' it's a pretty small town - word gets around if you've got something good/new/interesting on the go.

As for actionable things - some local devs, in my area, started a tech/dev meetup group here that's evolved into a 500 person slack channel (in-person meetings pre-covid) and it's a great place to find people and talk about jobs/local market. Definitely not a short-term fix. Also, leveraging any kind of news about a funding announcement or big contract or local impact helps get your name out there. I know a few former colleagues who saw the company name in an article/newspaper or an industry magazine and wound up applying for roles.

Best of luck!

To be honest if 95% actual apples I came across were rotten, I probably wouldn't eat apples either.