Do you have software meetups in your area? They can be a good place to recruit from if you find one related to your company’s open recs. Also, consider sponsoring one.
Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
51–60 of 148 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#52Word of mouth. We’re research/science adjacent enough that the grad school social network works well; there’s also a modest finder’s bonus.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#53For the UK, try listing on Indeed. When I was looking for a position back in 2020 it was the only job site that listed jobs where the companies looking to recruit actually got back to me. I used to use JobServe and S1 but sadly they're overrun with recruiters.
A bunch of my pals over the past five years have used Indeed successfully to find software development work (contract and permanent), that's how it was recommended to me. And my current role came from an ad on Indeed.
> Recruiters tend to be a poor and expensive solution
Agreed, from the job hunter side of things. If I see roles advertised by a recruiter I tend to be less inclined to apply for the job.
Also make sure your advert contains as much detail as possible about required skills, desirable skills, holidays that kinda thing. Maybe also include a salary range for the role, ads that displayed salary expectations were more likely to get a click from me than those that didn't.
---
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Indeed, just demonstrated what worked for me as a job hunter.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#54Let me give some advice I’ve heard from candidates: post the compensation information!
This alone will set you apart, and attract more applicants.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#55I work for a small-ish engineering firm on a small rock off the Norwegian coast. The local labour market for engineers, technicians and developers is pretty much empty - as in, everybody with the skills required and the desire to live here already does. Recruiting more often than not means sniping, or, if we're lucky - that someone has recently found a partner with desirable skills and coaxed them into moving up here…
Do you not hire remotely from the entirety of the European Union? Would you consider hiring a web developer with 4 years of experience, of which 2.5 is backend and 1.5 is full stack (HTML, CSS, JS within a CMS)?
I am asking because that reflects my situation and I am having a difficult time interviewing with most people expecting 3+ year exclusively in frontend.
I have been trying to make a switch from backend to frontend development. I went from Backend Dev -> Fullstack Dev and I am currently trying to do the next step to -> Frontend Dev.
Would be nice to know how to approach this.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#56It's tough. I've been a hiring manager and my company is trying to hire like mad now (link in profile if you want to check it out; we legally must provide salary range so it might be of interest for comparison purposes).
My suggestions:
* widen the net. If you previously needed folks to be local, can you have them be in the UK? If you needed them in the UK, can you expand to the EU? If you previously needed ruby experts, can you work with someone who is an expert at another similar dynamic language (php, python, etc)?
* hire newer devs/junior folks if you can build or have the infrastructure to support them. From what I can see, there's not a dearth of folks looking for their first dev job. You'll just have to train them up.
* reach out to local bootcamps. There are a lot of folks there hungry for work. Sure, some of them aren't great, but there may be quite a few worth chatting with. Especially had luck with folks who had a previous career but were pivoting into tech.
* find a good recruiter. How? I'd look at recruiters who have invested in the community. I have one in Colorado who has sponsored community events for a decade. If you don't see one of those, maybe ask friends for referrals?
* be public about the company's engineering/design/product culture. This is a longer play, but can let folks self-select out or in to chatting with you. Posting on the monthly who is hiring threads here at HN is another way to be public.
* support local meetups for the technology you are using. I run a meetup and the sponsorships are quite cheap, esp when compared to recruiter fees or the opportunity cost of an unfilled job.Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#57As a developer, I frequently wonder about the exact opposite question: where does one learn about companies in need of developers, and about what these companies do and how they do it. For example, if I were a frontend web developer looking for a company that builds their product(s) as a progressive web app using web components, where would I look? It's easy to find job boards filled with ads from recruiters; but har…
angel list maybe?
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#58Network and direct sourcing.
It's a grind, and you need to be selling yourself.
If you're finding it tough go speak to Thayer: https://team-prime.com/about/ they are an agency but won't bill you by person hired but by role advertised (i.e. if you need to hire 4 systems engineers you'll pay for the effort to source and work a single distinct role for the period of time it takes to fill the 4 positions).
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#59I'm not from UK but it seems the story is pretty much the same for small companies. From experience, there's no single place that will just work. Have to keep trying through multiple channels all the time. Here are some ways that we try. - LinkedIn Jobs, indeed etc like job boards - HN (whoishiring), angel.co - technology specific job boards (welovegolang, pycoders weekly etc) - references through current employees,…
Yeah, we're doing the same in Germany. Also I have a team in the Ukraine (can't recommend right now haha) and also recruiters for specialists and seniors. Pretty expensive, but cheaper than not growing. I can also recommend join.com, lot's of noise though.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#60Do you have funding? Have you launched a version of your product?
Throw money at the problem of if have funding. Talk about your product if it is solving an interesting problem. Hopefully that will make some noise to attract some talent. I'm based in UK too and would love to see people crack this problem the bootstrapped way. Would you mind sharing what you are building?