
Ask HN: How do you hire top talent in 2019? - yani
For the past 3 years, I&#x27;ve been trying to find and hire elite engineers, customer support and sale reps. It proved to be the bottleneck for scaling my business.
My best hire happened via an ad with $50 budget that showed up while reading email in gmail.
I&#x27;ve tried LinkedIn talent search, AngelList and many job boards but the results were&#x2F;are not good enough. Is hiring dedicated HR company the best bet?
What works for you? What does not?
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raquo
I don't know anything about your particular company, and I'm not hiring
myself, but here's my two cents from the other side of the table:

1) If you want elite engineers either offer them elite compensation and/or
elite working conditions (remote, flexibility on workload, many weeks of
vacation, time shifting, etc.).

2) If you want elite engineers make sure they know your job offer is elite by
publishing specific compensation ranges, working conditions, and other
information that makes your job offer elite. Abstract promises like
"competitive compensation" or "above market pay" are standard marketing copy,
not a differentiator.

This goes for other concerns such as dev culture just as well, but lack of
compensation and work hours information is the worst. It's like trying to sell
a house while withholding both price and location upfront.

~~~
ddorian43
This. Best job would be: Remote (your own timezone); Pay: $180K-$360K; 40
Vacation Days; Work on hard crazy tech; Will be surrounded by smarter people
etc

~~~
yani
Yes. We offer it. What we do not have is working on a bleeding edge work -
electric vehicles, space flights, cure cancer .. etc

------
askafriend
You hire elite talent by competing in the talent marketplace with compensation
and opportunity.

If I can go to FB/Goog and pull down ~350k+ a year, why should I come work for
you? You need to have a really good answer or something that is
differentiating/compelling enough.

Either that or you'll have to be comfortable settling for lower quality talent
and the associated consequences - it becomes a strategy question at that
point.

~~~
yani
Yes, compensation is not the issue. It is finding the people.

~~~
droithomme
Just to confirm, you are well above 350k, correct?

~~~
burfog
He can be far below that if he adds some other goodies. People vary, so not
everybody will agree, but for example:

a. not engaged in tracking people across the web or elsewhere, or any other
kind of sneaky spying

b. location that doesn't require being well above 350k to have a nice life

c. politically like the other half of America

I would not accept a FB/Goog job for 350k. Add a golden parachute worth twenty
million dollars and I might reconsider, but that isn't normally offered.

------
mnash
For talent as in demand as elite engineers, your's or your team's network is
critical. Following that, paying a recruitment firm is runner up, but its a
big step down from network (and a big step up in cost).

During the early days of my previous company (which currently has a ~30 person
engineering team), the founding team scoured our networks, reached out to
people personally, and did everything we could to share the inspiration we
felt about the company. That plus fair compensation, allowed us to bring on
some awesome people.

The good news is elite talent tends to know other elite talent, and if they
love the company, they become natural evangelists. A generous referral bonus
also helps, however means nothing if your people don't already love your
company. The end result is this attracts more talent!

Occasionally we'd supplement this with recruiters, but our network was 5x more
efficient, and wayyyy less expensive even with referral bonuses we paid to
employees.

I'm in the process of starting my next company, and while I'm not hiring
engineers for another 6+ months, I'm meeting with everyone in my network and
anyone they recommend to let them know about the company. People are already
excited, and it's also just plain fun to meet smart people and catch up with
friends. From there, I keep people in the loop and also try to support them in
their endeavours. This leads to a lot of 'serendipity', where your company is
top of mind for people as they plan their next move, which hopefully aligns
with when you're hiring.

Now compare that to a random job post or inmail message on LinkedIn.

------
_ah
The compensation question has been beaten to death, and you claim to be well
above FAANG, so I'll add one more: does your company have a black mark next to
their name (real or perceived)? Here are some profitable, high-paying
companies that individuals in my network have completely written off:

* Facebook (creepy) * Amazon (stress/politics) * Palantir (government contracts) * major banks (bailouts) * Uber (executive bad behavior)

If this is your situation, you need to embrace who you are. Some people hate
you... great! Hopefully some people LOVE you as well. Even if you don't have a
well-known name, you still have an opportunity to build your brand and explain
the "why".

If you are truly interested in top talent, meeting the comp bar is necessary
but not sufficient. Give people a reason to join you, and a reason to spread
your name through their network.

------
usgroup
I think a useful definition of “elite” would be that you have some sort of
competition the performance on which stack ranks the competitors, the top N of
which are considered elite.

Now, what that means in academia is pretty straightforward since academia is
one big scoreboard.

However, what that means at work, I’ve no idea...

------
arenaninja
One thing I don't see mentioned in your post or the replies is geographic
location. I'm a software engineer living in a relatively low COL state. My pay
isn't the greatest so I talk to the FANG recruiters when they contact me. They
seem to be aware that not all of us can move to the Bay Area at the drop of a
hat so they tell me that I can have my pick of city (usually
Seattle/Austin/Atlanta)

Agreed with others that network can be pretty key. Even for acquaintances I've
recruited to my current company (3 so far), our company was not in their radar
but they were immediately willing to try it out since I gave them my
recommendation (and all of us remain here)

------
arandr0x
What is your company size? If you're hiring sales reps (multiple) and customer
support (multiple) you've got to be more than 30? Because at less than that
just use personal referrals.

How elite are you talking? Is it a case where you're doing <X> and you want to
hire (this one guy at Facebook who invented X)? Or just "really good devs"?
This makes a difference. For key people targeted poaching may work (it will
cost you more than normal hiring of 1 person, but probably not even 3x more,
and if it's a truly key position you may need the one expert on the subject).
If it's a more general position, but you just want someone smart enough, you
can try asking your top 30% or so employees to ask all their friends if
they're looking, or if the 3 or so people they or those friends would judge to
be their best ex-coworkers are looking. You need a referral from someone who's
worked with the person at some point, to ascertain their work (not social)
performance, but it doesn't need to be a 1st degree referral, because your
employees' immediate network, regardless if they're a fit for you, are
probably pretty smart.

If location is an issue (you're not in a metropolis and your location is not
known for tech) contact the local university's career services department.

------
otras
How competitive is the salary you're offering for engineers? How does it
compare with salaries found at the big tech companies?

~~~
yani
We are paying higher than top companies.

~~~
TuringNYC
I’ve heard this often but just as often it is “we want _senior engineers_ for
higher than _entry level_ big co salaries”. Are you comparing apples to
apples?

------
EnderMB
In my limited experience of hiring, there are only two consistent rules that
apply:

1\. Be a top company - either have a big name people want to work for, or a
(provably) talented team that do notable work. Everyone bullshits their way
around this, but most devs sniff that out pretty quickly.

2\. Pay more than others.

It's really as simple as that. When my ex-employers were well-known to people
in our circles, we had a much-larger pick of the litter, and when we messaged
other solid developers about the role, they were interested in interviewing.
When we were either a smaller company or not notable, if we needed someone
that could hit the ground running or take a commanding role, we paid above
market rates instead of paying out of our ass for recruiters or long-term job
ads. Two jobs ago, my employer "negotiated" a 10% rate with a local recruiter
based on first-year salary, and were shocked when the person we hired was
shit. They put the same job ad out again, with that rate on top of the salary,
and ended up hiring a really good dev.

#2 worked the best for me in the past, and it shouldn't be a shock, but
getting this to work came with its own challenges:

* Getting an employer to pay more than what is absolutely necessary. We all want the best dev team, but we don't all _need_ the best team. Furthermore, most people don't care about the long-term issues an inexperienced/bad hire can make. They'd rather take the risk and play the hiring lottery than pay a bit extra.

* Having faith in your team to pick the best candidates. This is really hard, and everyone has an opinion, even twenty-something graduates who have never hired a person in their life, let alone a developer.

* Accepting that the people that have attended the interview aren't good enough. Most of the time, in my experience, people have been hired because they need a warm body in the chair, and they've had no other bites.

~~~
ldasj
I am amazed how many companies do the exact opposite. Most small and no-name
companies I applied to interview like Google and pay less than average.

Also, not sure what's with all the panel interviews. Everybody and their
grandma wants to pitch in on the new guy.

~~~
EnderMB
I think a lot of it is down to people overinflating the importance of their
work, or the qualifications of their team. You could have a legitimately
talented team and have delivered successful projects for big-name companies,
but I'd be willing to bet that there are half a dozen other companies within
the same city with similar size clients, a similarly-skilled team, and
equivalent work.

It's all marketing. A company might sell the fact that you're doing large-
scale work for global clients, when in reality you're building shitty CRUD
apps for big-name companies that have farmed out the work because it's short-
term work for a single department.

The panel interview is always a weird one. I've known a few places do it, and
it's usually because the company is flat enough that certain individuals want
to assert control over certain groups of people. My old place did panel
interviews, with leads from design, tech, and PM's sitting in to ensure they
have influence on that team.

------
JSeymourATL
> trying to find and hire elite engineers, customer support and sale reps.

Start with this (serious) question: _If I 'm an Elite Engineer -- WHY would I
WANT to come work for you?_

The Elites aren't checking job boards or Linkedin.

However, you'll often find them at meet-ups, conferences, or occasionally
lurking here on HN. ;)

------
thedevindevops
I can never grasp why this is still a problem. You want to hire top talent?
Easy, make your business somewhere top talent wants to work. Don't know what
attracts top talent? Ask your existing talent what would make working there
better. Implement and repeat.

------
p1esk
When recruiters contact me, I usually want to know:

1\. What does the company do? Is it interesting and cool?

2\. Who are the people? Will I enjoy working for/with them?

3\. Location: I want good climate and smart/rich people living there.

4\. Vacation: 4 weeks minimum.

5\. Salary: if the above is all 'yes', then I could accept as low as $150k in
bay area. If there's one 'no', it's better be at least $200k. If more than one
'no', I'm unlikely to be interested, regardless of the pay.

EDIT: since you got some attention here on HN, why don't you post a link to
the job description?

------
rchaudhary
Just curious, have you tried platforms such as
[https://www.vettery.com](https://www.vettery.com),
[https://triplebyte.com/](https://triplebyte.com/) or
[https://hired.com/](https://hired.com/)?

~~~
yani
I recently learned about hired.com. We are pending approval with them. I will
check the other sites that you mentioned

------
ldasj
By top talent do you mean FAANG employees, well-known experts/researchers or
maybe people like Max Howell? What qualifies as elite?

------
edpichler
Hello, you can hire here at my contact details page... Just kidding!

Hiring is like sales. You need to do marketing and build good funnel (the end
being the application process) to filter the candidates you want to. You will
make mistakes, of course, track it and use it to improve your funnel. There
are no shortcuts.

------
badpun
If you really are offering conditions (at least one of: salary, vacations,
interesting work subject) well above market and still are having problems
attracting people, then it might be a visibility problem. In such case, hiring
a bunch of spammers (aka recruiters) might sadly be your best option.

------
wjossey
I run a free mentoring service for managers as a form of community service.
I'm happy to talk this through live if you think it'd be valuable.

[https://freemanagermentors.com](https://freemanagermentors.com)

With that being said, let me take a crack at it here!

My number one response for hiring top talent is always tapping internal
referrals. Asking your current employees for the name of the best person
they've ever worked. Repeat that process for every new hire you make (with
proper consideration for non-solicits).

My second thought, not knowing anything about you or your company, would be to
spend less time thinking about whether or not you can attract/hire top talent,
and focus more on finding high-growth talent and strong internal coaches.
Exceptional talent (true top 5%'ers), in my experience, are more likely to
land somewhere by referral or are poached, rather than just "out on the
market". "Strong" talent, which I would define as high performers, can be
built internally, so long as you put in the right infrastructure to help them
succeed.

That means you need to focus on finding managers that know how to create
opportunities for their people, and leads who know how to coach technical
skills in day to day work. Don't confuse these skills with your "top
individual contributor" on staff. Someone who is a great coder, excellent
customer rep, or your top salesperson, does not immediately make them a good
mentor (think technical lead) or manager (project management skills, cross-
functional skills, energizing personality, etc.). So, as you begin to search
your organization for these people, make sure to not confuse highly skilled
individuals with great leaders.

Once you have this type of infrastructure in place, your hiring process can
re-orient towards a wider pool of candidates that aren't necessarily pre-made
A+ stars, but rather someone with a C or B level talent, with high-growth
potential. Your hiring process should reflect this. Things you begin to look
for are:

1\. Individuals who grew rapidly inside of a company (often rapid title
growth), but are leaving due to compensation issues, the company going under,
displeasure with the business, etc. The risk with these types of individuals
is often that they can have a mercenary mentality, so look to see if you can
either screen that out or if you can coach that out of them after they are
hired. 2\. Individuals who seem to have worn a "bunch of hats" across a couple
of jobs, and maybe haven't had time to build depth. Sometimes breadth of
experience can be misinterpreted as a lack of skill set, but really just means
that they bounced between responsibilities because they are a rapid learner.
The risk with these types of individuals is that they constantly are switching
roles because they're consistently low performers in that work,

My third and final suggestion would be to find a recruiting firm that you feel
like delivers you high-quality talent and work with that firm to continue to
hone the types of individuals they send your way. It can be exceptionally
expensive, but great firms can make a world of difference. I can't give you a
specific recommendation, as it seems each city has a "best in class" for
different roles and functions, so you may need to ask your local network who
they use. Remember to provide feedback to the recruiters so that they
understand why you pass on candidate A, or why candidate B ended up being a
great hire. They'll use that information to look for higher-quality matches in
the future.

~~~
yani
Thank you for doing this. I will try to reach you on the site. I believe this
topic will be useful to many other business owners.

------
amuresan
It might also be specific to the niche you're hiring for. What's your field of
operation? What technologies / technical disciplines are you looking for?

------
tmaly
I think you have to listen to who you are trying to hire.

What do they really want?

How can your organization goals intersect with their personal goals?

------
Chyzwar
Did you tried Github?

~~~
yani
Yes, 1.5 years ago and the results were poor. Has anything changes during that
time? Is it worth another look?

~~~
Chyzwar
Maybe you can try to leverage Github API to search for possible candidates. If
your company is open for the remote you can find some talented people that are
interested in tech/business domain that you operate.

    
    
      https://www.socialtalent.com/blog/recruitment/how-to-use-github-to-find-super-talented-developers
      https://devskiller.com/source-developers-from-github/
    

I am not in a position to recruit people. But I would be interested to know if
this approach can work.

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sethammons
Define top talent :)

