FYI: thoughts based on posting/studying CL ads, so application to SO may be limited.
Title
> ASP.net (c#) and Javascript Developer (Fast Growing Startup)
Straightforward title, like the inclusion of the type of company and type of work you will be doing (fast growing startup)
Job Description
> We're looking for a talented ASP.net (c#) and Javascript developer to work with us in our SW London office based in Twickenham.
Would probably include 'fulltime.' Would also suggest a short description of what the company does. You are kind of burying the lead by not saying "We develop a Windows program that lets anyone make HTML5 games." As a start up employee WHAT I'm working on is as/more important that what I'm doing in code.
Roles
> Develop our website
This is vague, are they working on a team? Make this more specific, are they in charge of design too? Do you have a designer?
> Help to develop a large separate Javascript web application
Also very vague, what would their role be here? How large is the team they would be working with?
> Perks
>
> Lots of opportunity for creative solutions to interesting problems
> We'll let you spec your own working computer! (within reason, we want you on the best stuff though!)
> Our website gets over 100k uniques per month and 1.2m page views, you'll often receive immediate feedback from our awesome community of game developers
> Pizza on fridays
These perks are rather vague/straightforward/drab. This is your chance to show your personality as a company (reframe in casual language you would actually use). For example: Instant feedback: with 1.2mm page views, if you push shitty code you'll know in seconds! (purely an example, do not advocate the word shitty)
> How we operate
>
> We're HTML5 evangelists!
> No dress code at all (as long as you wear something!)
> Highly flexible working hours (you might prefer 12-8 instead of 9-5, we can work with just about any hours you want)
> Open to the possibility of interesting side projects if you have any ideas
> You will be our first employee working at our fast growing startup! We're looking for quality applicants and are willing to pay a competitive salary to reflect this.
Again this is your chance to be quirky. "No dress code at all" could easily be "Wear what you want. We love nudists, just not at work."
You are hiding the salary talk at the end of the ad. This could easily be put as a bullet at the end of "how we operate" like: "Salary: we want the best and we'll pay you like we mean it." By hiding it down here, it is hard to find and I might miss it.
In general the thigns that people want to know:
- What I will be doing
- Who I will be doing it with
- Am I going to get money or equity?
Those should visually be easy to pull out. Roles does the first, you need to give them the other two.
> Skills & Requirements
>
> Must Have
>
> Highly proficient with ASP.net c# development
> Highly proficient with Javascript development
> Experience with Linq
> Experience with SQL Server
> Easy to get along with and love what you do!
Again a chance for personality. The more specific the better people with filter themselves out. Do you want someone with JS MVC framework experience, JS is a pretty big language with a ton of subtlety.
> Nice to Have
>
> C++ for Windows Development
> Enjoy making and playing games
> A sense of humour!
> About Scirra Ltd
Spice this up as well. Why is C++ a nice to have "we want you to help us write the games too!"
> Scirra was established in 2011 and we've been growing fast. We develop and sell Construct 2 in house, a Windows program that lets anyone make HTML5 games. To date, it's been downloaded over 200,000 times.
>
> Since day one of selling we've been profitable and revenues are continuing to grow. We're now looking for our first full time in-house employee!
In general I think that working in an area you have experience in makes things smoother especially in the beginning. You know the pain points without having to do any research and have some initial "instinct" that points you toward potential solutions.
However, I strongly believe the most important thing for an early-stage start up is passion around the space/solving the pain points. The main reason is that working in a start-up is really hard and, at times, soul-draining. If you hit that depression phase and you aren't 100% committed to solving the problem you'll never pull out of the death spiral.
That being said, if you're passionate, you don't have to be an expert as long as you commit to becoming an expert quickly. Tons of breakthroughs happen when intelligent novices enter a space without the preconceptions of the existing leaders.
This is great solution and the impetus behind Interiew Street.
And while HN is a very programmer centric culture, most jobs can't be automated in this way. Look at the OP's job description, how do you automate that? And how does someone like the OP automate that process? Believe me, I would love to live in a world where every position in every company is able to command a great developer to build a customer filtering solution, but most companies in the valley (much less out of it) won't invest this time/infrastructure. Hence the rise of BS keyword filtering systems. I'm personally very interested in solutions that can make this process better, but it's a highly non-trivial problem in most subject areas.
While I agree that work samples are definitely the way to go, I'm unsure how you could possibly engineer a work-sample that is time effective for 600 people. Clearly, the first pass of the screen cannot be the work sample alone or you will be administering dozens if not hundreds, since I doubt the threat of a worksample in a job ad would scare many people away (could very well be wrong about that.)
I think this is why HireArt (YC W12), exists. They pre-vet these candidates using a work sample for you, presumably they only administered and graded the work samples of those they found passed the 'resume bar.'
As for false positives, from talking to many employers the fear false positives is generally low because they figure they can "weed them out" during the interview stage. And while there may be statistical evidence showing a high false positive rate, it is surprisingly hard to convince hiring managers of this.
While the competition in these situations is not often that broad (though there will always be a few ivy leaguers in that mess), the real problem is the noise factor. The chance that your resume even gets read is slim due to the fact that it will take many hours to go through 600 applications.
The much sadder reality is what actually happens in a company that posts that ad:
1) Optimistically post the job ad.
2) Receive hundreds of responses within hours of posting it.
3) Begin going through those hundreds of responses, reading cover letters and resumes. At first you're pumped then you realize very few people here are qualified for the position/read the post.
4) After ~20 resumes, you close your email for the day. If you made the mistake of using your personal email address, I'm sorry.
5) Despair. Pick and choose random emails (maybe filter by email, are there any harvard.edu's in there?) and immediately call the first person who seems remotely OK. Iterate step 5 until you find 'the one.'
I've worked with/observed dozens of employers in this process, a tiny fraction of resumes actually get read, and frankly it's impossible to stay focused through the experience. A "fun" experiment is to print out 40 resumes in a pile, write a job description for those resumes and then try to find the most qualified one in that bunch. Free-text association with often poorly-articulated job requisitions is a nearly impossible proposition. Add in the step where you have to download and track those applicants, and it's damn near impossible to use Craigslist to find the best candidate.
This was the original inspiration for our company, Foundry Hiring (www.foundryhiring.com). We're trying to build tools to make this process as painless as possible. In this instance we will give you a free link to post in your CL ad which has an application form in front of it, so that emails don't hit your inbox, the applicant's are stored directly in our database. We then give you tracking tools on top of it to make the process better. We're still in beta, but I would love user feedback.
Adding hurdles will definitely reduce the number of applicants, but what you'll find is that if you ask for X, Y, Z in the ad most people will still send you whatever they were going to send you before (most likely a resume and coverletter). You then know they didn't read the ad and thus should probably be deleted.
This is why lots of job ads on craigslist say: "write XYZ in the email title" buried in the text to filter for those people who aren't even reading the ad.
The comments have become a firestorm of grammar-as-a-filter for programmers. While this is an interesting debate, I think there are three things about this filter that give it value:
1) Grammar serves as a cultural touchstone in the company, so using a grammar test in hiring is a strong signal to employees and future employees about what we as a company stand for. If you apply to this job and you disregard grammar freely (guilty as charged) you will not fit into this organization. It's a fast filter on both ends: I won't take the test, and if I did you would reject me immediately. Excellent.
2) It is a binary, non-complex test. You write the test once and there is a unambiguous right and wrong answer, if you get the questions right you pass, if you don't you are rejected. This has several benefits:
Applicants: They know this is coming and can prepare/not prepare for it. The test is objective, so they can't really argue with its validity. At one point they probably knew this material, meaning that an hour of time to prepare for the finer points of colons/semi-colons is probably doable if they really want the job.
Employer:
Since the answers are unambiguous this filter is easy to use: passed candidates go through. There is no subjectivity around assessing a candidate using a resume or cover letter. In my experience (CEO in hiring efficiency space) this easily-actionable filter means that the task at hand will actually get done. If you watch recruiters try to parse through 200+ resumes against a job req, they will stop after 10-15. They might come back to it on another day, or they might not. Either way the applicant pipeline stops dead on their desk. It's frustrating for the recruiter because the task becomes "analyze this free-text against a free-text requisition and then filter this list of 200 people down to 20."
The reality of this situation is that most resumes don't get read and the person who ends up getting the job is one of the first 20 that were read. Obviously this situation is non-ideal, so I generally advocate an objective, simple filter as the first step to any process (before looking at resume.) Internal recruiters, in their heart of hearts, want to find the best applicant in the bunch, if you don't give them the tools to do their job then they won't.
3) They've thought about their process and institutionalized it. When I see a company that has thought seriously about the filter stage of the process then I know: a) they care about their employees' time b) they care about quality applicant's and the culture they project in the hiring process c) they have probably thought about all stages of the hiring process so things are likely to move quickly and smoothly.
This is an excellent point. The analogy I like to use is based on prospecting: you can try to find fully-formed gold from the earth or you can smelt down ore into something useful. Right now the valley is full of prospectors stealing gold nuggets from each other, and I think there is a ton of opportunity to transform smart, hardworking people into great employees.
Of course this requires time and training, which some start-ups feel they can't afford. In the end I think it's worth it to focus on finding talent that can learn quickly rather than emerge from Zeus's brain fully-formed.
That's really too bad. I don't work with/for them, but I know many of the recruiting team and they have been very responsive to feedback in the past. If you have specific comments/critiques feel free to message me, I'd be happy to pass them on.
Sadly, I think this is right. I know several recruiters at a big-name recruiting agency in Silicon Valley, they try to act like an internal recruiter (thorough vetting of candidates, understanding company culture, etc) and they make much less money than if they had just adopted the pay and spray mentality of their peers.
The bright hope for me is darwinian: if enough startups refuse to use these pay and sprayers then they will die off, leaving only the higher quality recruiters. Will that happen? Not any time soon.
It really depends on the size of organization. For something like Google, I would say that long-response times are the norm and frequently the recruiter/contact person are extremely swamped and may have forgotten about you. Not necessarily because you aren't good, but because their volume is insane. In this case I would write a quick letter that says "Thanks, I really enjoyed meeting X (person you talked to). We had a good conversation and I wanted to check if you needed any more information from me." This is generally enough to push them if they are inclined to pursue you, if they didn't like you for whatever reason then they probably won't respond or will reject you. If they don't respond after that I would say send one more email about a week later that is slightly more urgent (considering other offers, etc). If they don't respond to that, then it's best to let that one go.
For smaller companies, they most likely don't have the resources to keep in touch with everyone. For me, this is the main value of an Applicant Tracking System: making sure no one falls through the cracks. That being said, most small companies don't have them, so they are relying on their memory + spreadsheet to carry them through.
If you're working through an external recruiter: talk to them, they have every incentive to push you through the pipeline and have a direct read on the process.
If you have a contact in the company or you met with someone in person: send them a quick follow up email is enough to move the pipeline usually.
If you've blind applied: then I would suggest sending them a quick note to get back onto their priority queue. Whomever is in charge of the process WANTS to respond to everyone, but if they don't see a fresh email sitting in their inbox, they quite possibly have forgotten that you're in the pipeline.
Also as mentioned below, pursuing many job opportunities in parallel is good for you and can be a great forcing-function/bargaining chip in late-stage hiring processes.
It integrates with Google Apps, specifically: Google Calendar, Google SSO, Google Contacts, and Gmail. The widget listed is currently for Google Chrome and inside the Gmail frame.
Thanks for the feedback on pricing. We are going to add a tier below enterprise and compete in the JobVite territory. In the mean time we offer 30 day free trial on all plans and a 75% off coupon for early beta users: HN75PCT.
Totally agree, I think of hiring as a chance to create company cultural emissaries. The best companies turn potential recruits into advocates for their brand, so even if they don't end up working at the company they tell their friends about how good the process and company are. See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...
Palantir is another company that does this well at Stanford. Those track jackets/t-shirts they wear are cultural symbols that give interns/employees status and spark conversations about the company. These 'little' things carry a lot of weight especially in the tight-packed network of university dorms.
Thanks for your interest, we haven't officially launched, but we have a number of early beta customers. We'll be doing an official launch in the next month.
Our initial beta customers have been working really close with me and the rest of the team to shape the product. So, the benefits have been around automating parts of the process that are annoying and manual right now. An example: most of our customers have one centralized person (out of 10-40 in the company) that does all the scheduling, sourcing, coordinating with recruiters. We looked at her process (done in google docs) and tried to automate as much as possible. The result: you can now schedule interviews directly from our gmail widget, select a person from your org, a candidate, and a time and we book the meeting on the respective calendar, notify the interviewer about the interview, send them the resume/coverletter and evaluation form and then bug them every 24 hours after the interview to ensure the feedback is logged. The estimate was that by simplifying this process to 3-4 clicks we save her ~ 20 hours of annoying work per week.
The tool has been built around simplifying work flows like this. We're still hashing out all of them, but our central thesis is: 99% of recruiting time is done through the inbox so why doesn't your ATS/CRM live there with you. Over the next couple weeks we're moving the functionality from the web app into the gmail inbox, when that is done we'll officially launch.
Honestly, I think the main benefits of Foundry are as follows:
- We've studied workflows across dozens of companies from Palantir to Facebook to small companies and built the tool around optimizing workflow and collecting data.
- When you come to us we have an out of the box process that works well (we'll show you data) that is somewhat customizeable to your particular company's process. So you start with a good base and the tool reinforces good behavior. This is the part of the tool we're building on the most: how to convey/reinforce best practices in the hiring process.
- Everything is in your inbox: no context switching/learning a new system.
- In the early stage I work closely with all our customers and as we learn new best practices/tips we pass those on to you.
- Lastly, I honestly think that using something like Foundry forces you to think critically about your process (as opposed to winging it), by giving you a framework you end up with a process that works more efficiently.
Our hope is that once we get more data around hiring we can push that knowledge out to everyone, so that company's stop losing hires due to the problems listed above. If you have any questions about your process or want some friendly advice about what you're doing well/poorly I'd be happy to chat, email in my signature.
As a start-up CEO in the hiring-efficiency space, I get to see a lot of company's hiring process in gory detail. Anyone who's been around new start-ups (and old guys, see: Google) has seen a great candidate withdraw from a req due to long response time. In a larger organization these inefficiencies can be handled by adding more schedulers, sourcers, recruiters, but in a small start-up you need a top-down commitment to speedy processing of candidates.
As a company gets larger (~series A) there comes a sudden crunch wherein you need 10 developers, yesterday. At that moment, if you haven't laid down the ground work for a successful recruiting/hiring strategy you can experience a very lossy hiring process. You'll miss out on great opportunities to companies who have spent the time, money and effort to make their process efficient.
To the articles recommendations, I would add the following:
- For top tier talent, recruiting is more like sales: you need to sell your company to the recruit, not vice versa.
- For each requisition do the following: decide what the relevant skills/requirements for the position, decide who on the interview team will assess each of those skills, train your interviewers to spend 1/2 their time selling the company and why they love working there and 1/2 their time grilling the applicant on their focus area. This forces you to think critically about what you're looking for (forces understanding of the org chart) and gives each person agency in the process (I'm in charge of sussing out algorithmic ability).
- Corollary to the above: train your interviewers. Make sure they know what they're looking for both culturally and technically, and make sure they have the ability to assess those properties (or lack thereof). Interviewers are your company's brand emissaries (and the source of many candidates) if they can't communicate well the recruits will come away with a bad experience.
- Track things: I think of recruiting like sales. If a VC asked you how your sales was going you wouldn't say something like "OK", you'd have numbers, metrics, graphs, funnels, pipelines, etc etc. Though this can feel a bit overkill in the beginning, getting in the habit of monitoring your candidate pipeline is extremely important as you scale. Small inefficiencies become enshrined as 'best practice' and as you scale they can turn into huge holes for your organization. This is exactly the type of problem we're trying to mitigate/measure by bringing the traditional applicant tracking system into the inbox at www.foundryhiring.com.
Being a good external recruiter in Silicon Valley is a tricky balancing act. Everyone in the Valley wants the superstars, so competition is ridiculous. Additionally, cultural fit in small startups is of utmost importance, so you have to learn the culture of the company your engaged with. The culture is also highly insular and revolves around being a jedi master of code, so if you're a recruiter you're expected to have a deep understanding of the technical needs of the company in addition to the cultural ones. Plus most startups want people who have an active understanding of new languages/frameworks/methodologies, so you also have to have thorough knowledge of the bleeding edge of tech. Lastly, this person needs to have good in-person skills, network, and ability to sell a position against whatever the competition is offering.
Since each company is different, every time you get a new client you need to recalibrate and get up to speed on what they need. This is why it's rare to find a truly good external recruiter (and impossible to find a good contingency recruiter for a short term engagement). In my opinion the best arrangements are long-term engagements, giving the recruiting firm time to understand exactly what you're looking for and calibrate their searches against that. Of course these engagements are expensive and time-consuming, so it's also why I'm a big fan of internal recruiters since they a) absorb and presumably live your culture and b) can have a much deeper understanding of your technology and team dynamics.
Depending on how you define interview. In my experience a rough funnel of 100 people (random people through a job board, not referrals) -> 20 phone screens -> 5-10 actual interviews. Generally at large organizations in the Valley a rate of 10 on campus interviews to one offer is considered inefficient (shoot for ~5 from an efficiency perspective). Too many in person interviews generally suggests a weak filter in an earlier step (you can learn quite a bit from a phone screen, for instance).
An example of meeting friends-of-friends is soshi.com. They recently launched at Stanford and leverage your facebook network to display eligible friends of friends, it two people express interest in one another, it matches you up.