Not in the UK, but workable.com works great, blasts resumes out for you to all your favorite job sites and consolidates them for you.
Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
71–80 of 148 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#72I 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 fro…
-We're at the other end of the stack, I'm afraid - Siemens S7 PLCs for the most part; whenever I code I basically write assembly code like it's 1979 - and it will never, ever be exposed to the web if I've got any say in the matter.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#73There are tech focused recruiters who do a good job of filtering candidates and can even do a great job at filtering coding skill. To your other point the most clued up and experienced candidates will have an idea about the recruiter they would use if not an existing “relationship”. E.g. if you’ve been hiring and came across a good recruiter you’re likely to go to that recruiter for your personal search. Maybe you need to start your candidate search with a search for the right recruiter.
Advertising on Reddit and Stack Overflow etc is fairly low return for the effort because it becomes a full time job answering queries and doing filtering (unless you have an in house recruiter in HR who can do this).
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#74I 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…
"Happy to work in a rather unstructured madhouse where the unofficial motto is 'We've never done that before, so we're probably quite good at it!'"
OTOH, some of us are at their happiest in this kind of environment!
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#752022 is going to be quite different.
Everyone I know job hunting is doing so for a big salary boost, as the pandemic has pushed prices high. People want to work remote and buy houses.
Smaller companies are at a significant disadvantage in terms of salary. Doubly so as in the UK, granting equity is rare unless you join as an exec or non exec.
I think finding the candidates is going to be the easy part. Convincing them to take less pay in a time of significant price rises is going to be hard.
As others have commented, think about how you’re different. (And “family “ and “culture” is a red flag, not a differentiator).
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, assuming I can get Schengen Visa from another country, is the process easier? I want to immigrate and Norway, Sweden, Finland are my top 3 destination. The thing is, getting visa there is harder. But if getting a Schengen visa would help (probably from France), I'm interested about the process to follow, can we have a chat?
At least for Sweden the process is pretty straightforward (at least at the moment). Once you have a job offer, the offering company usually hires some lawyer or company licensed (to fast track the visa within a week, a month at max). Drop me some contact info, I can refer you. At least you can go through the process and check it out.
You can email me at ralinoro [at] outlook [dot] fr.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#77Recruitment firms can be very expensive, fees that charge £000's to place someone in a city firm, are not uncommon.
However there are people in the UK who frequent sites like this, so why dont you have a link back to your website in your profile or in your submissions?
"Good" is also a very all encompassing word, you might need to be a bit more specific over your requirements.
some of the more niche technologies is word of mouth, through user groups, bbs's news groups, things like that, but not on any recruitment sites ironically.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#78Never done any recruiting, but here something I have noticed in recruitment efforts. Figure out what you really need and how "good" is defined. Good is contextual. My past company spent a lot of time on system design interviewing. Here is the problem. We didn't build anything close to a complex system. We created demos to show off to clients as MVPs. So we left positions open for months until we found the perfect per…
'Figure out what you really need and how "good" is defined.'
That would be ideal, but as a candidate, have you ever really met a company that knew what they wanted?
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#79Are looking for local dev/designers only? Remote first is the hot thing right now, so maybe that would help as it would be more attractive. PS: I'm a 30 year old dude from a 3rd world country learning how to code. I'm not good, yet, but I'm hard working and I learn fast. Just trying my luck, but do you guys take an apprentice? Or maybe in need of customer support? I'm just looking to learn. What's in for you is cost…
Remote can be challenging for different reasons. We do have remote (UK only) folks but as soon as you extend that to other countries, it is kind of like offshoring but without the value-add of local management. Risk are:
* Time zones can cause things to take a long time to resolve
* Cultural differences can be confusing (like people who say, "yes" to be polite, not because the answer is yes!)
* The legal protections are much lower when dealing with another country
* You have practical concerns like shipping things (laptops etc.) that just create even more work
* Possible language barriers, especially with very complicated or subtle things
I think it can work well but only when you have designed your company around remote-first working and probably only for experienced staff who you can expect to know what they are doing.
Re: Ask HN: How do small companies do recruitment?
#80Let me give some advice I’ve heard from candidates: post the compensation information! This alone will set you apart, and attract more applicants.
It's not always as easy as that though.
The range might be literally £20-80K depending on experience so OK, that helps someone on £100K to know they are not likely (but not impossibly) going to get the same or more salary.