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How We Found Great Talents for Our Remote Company Without Spending a Fortune
- ddorian43 8y agoCarefull of too much "extensive application form", it may bite you. Takes time to fill those forms and then get an automated "no thanks", can be discouraging. Point is to reduce friction but not too much. (code this big function before applying). I would add a salary-range too. As insanely cool the work may be, your kids/landord don't care that you're saving/changing the world. Example: Coolest things can be in the resume, what would you like is usually the job-description/role etc, can you work remote (I already have x years remote in my resume) in same/different timezones . Many forms double the things that already are listed in the resume (all questions taken from the form are listed in my resume).
- ggg9990 8y agoMost companies don’t care how discouraging they are to the people they don’t hire.
- neogodless 8y agoAnd this is exactly why the comment above yours has value. Beat the drums and spread the message. I mean, I suppose it's entirely possible that "most companies" are quite pleased with their hiring process and the people they have hired, and truly believe there is no one better that they could have hired. But there's a pretty good chance they could have hired someone better... not objectively, universally better, but better suited to their actual day-to-day needs.
- clay_the_ripper 8y agoWhen applying to jobs this is frustrating. But being on the other side of it, as an employer, the administrative load of processing applications is huge. As a small company, I simply cannot afford to spend hours and hours writing responses to people we don’t hire. It sucks, but I completely understand why this is so common.
- pc86 8y agoActual title is "fortune," not "cent"
- zanalyzer 8y ago"Facebook groups are super useful because it’s 99% certain that your next hire has a Facebook." Funny, that's precisely how I filter candidates too. First question: "Did you bring your Facebook?"
- wierd0 8y ago> Facebook groups are super useful because [...] I guess our visions aren't aligned then. Anyone into the sport of making money would agree that SEO is a good thing but the way you sell it to me I'd want to kill myself before I work for you guys. Nightwatch, you produce market speak aimed towards the completely wrong tree.
- larrik 8y ago> If a person’s answers are clearly inflated and their claims of accomplishment seem exaggerated, take it as a red flag. I'm not convinced you can tell that as well as you think you can. > it's 99% certain that your next hire has a Facebook If you are hiring a social media manager or SEO person (like in this article), definitely. I feel like hiring devs are often a different challenge altogether.
- janesvilleseo 8y agoYou’d be surprised how many people in digital marketing don’t have a Facebook account. I thought I’d be shamed for never having one, but the more I talk about it, the more people I find out don’t have one either Note: I have an empty/fake account so I can access client accounts.
- gk1 8y agoI'm a marketing consultant and I don't have FB. The line about "99%" of candidates having FB makes me think the author is out of touch.
- throwawaymath 8y agoI want to agree with your first point, because I'm confident there are unexaggerated highlights on my resume which would make certain hiring managers skeptical. But if we're more charitable about it, they did use the word "clearly"...presumably there is some unconveyed context there about obvious cases of exaggeration. It might not be about claiming something unbelievable so much as it is about claiming something very impressive but not filling in a corresponding amount of detail about it?
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- j_m_b 8y agoThis is just another "this is how we setup the hoops people need to jump through to get hired at our company!" article. I don't particularly think making it more difficult to fill out an application is the kind of filter you're looking for. I don't see how you are going to find "great talent" (another term that's been rendered meaningless) without looking at a Github page, sample projects, or viewing sample code. No mention even of Hacker News Who's Hiring thread!
- dtertman 8y agoCan't help feeling the TLDR here is "luck". Heavy survivor bias, no metrics on things that either weren't working or feedback from candidates/hires of what worked.
- gain_sky 8y agoSounds like another obnoxious silicon-valley wannabe company. The kind of place that is "changing the world" one internet search at a time. "Define your company values and mission" 90% of these are tautological marketing catch lines, anybody with a brain will be able to smell the bullsh*t on this one. Also keep in mind that their tagline is that they "create enterprise-level search visibility tools for internet samurais of the future". Samurais - enough said.
- lostcolony 8y agoFirst, I want to say I largely agree with you. Second, I want to say that the 10% of a company's values/missions that aren't tautological marketing catch phrases are actually -incredibly- important, and can directly contribute to a company's success. The fact 90% deviate is more to do with companies not realizing how important it is to not just be marketing fluff, than any intrinsic value or lack thereof of having such a statement. Fundamentally, a company has many decisions where they have to choose A or B, not both. Oftentimes these decisions are made at a level the CEO or similar has no insight into. To be able to ensure people make the right decisions and are all pulling in the same direction, a culture has to be adopted. Mission statements, value statements, etc, are the only tool the CEO really has to shape that culture, beyond simply hiring into the roles directly underneath him (which is hard to do without insight into what is going on beneath -them-). The Culture Code has a great segment in it about how Johnson & Johnson's credo (specifically, "We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services") led to its handling of the cyanide in the tylenol incident, which saved the product line (when every analyst was like "that's done, no one will trust Tylenol again"), as well as introduced the now ubiqitous tamper proof packaging.
- xstartup 8y agoYea, but when everyone from ICOs to shady diet piet e-commerce companies uses same tactics, it no longer works.
- lostcolony 8y ago
- BerislavLopac 8y agoThis form risks loosing the best candidates, for being too extensive (as @ddorian43 has noted) and requiring the candidates to dedicate a solid amount of time to formulate their answers in writing; and the best candidates don't have too much time on their hands. And it is not just the time to write the answers; the questions are quite open-ended and require the candidate to consider their inner motivation. Some candidates might even be compelled to lie when answering questions such as "What are your prospects, dreams and expectations?" because they might fear a negative reaction to the truth, which is often along the lines of "I want to be fairly compensated for my contribution". It would be much better if they offered multiple pre-defined options, with an additional option to write in another answer; e.g. for the first question it could be something like: Why would you like to work at Nightwatch? (select all that apply) [ ] I like the product [ ] My skillset is a right match to the position [ ] I hope to learn new skills [ ] I am the watcher on the walls [ ] Other (please specify): _________________________________________
- bambataa 8y agoIf you offer a set of checkboxes like that won't most people just check all of them? While considering your inner motivation is great in general, it seems pointless in a job application where you can't just say that you're hoping to be reasonably well-paid to do reasonably interesting work.
- BerislavLopac 8y ago> If you offer a set of checkboxes like that won't most people just check all of them? Not in my experience.
- neogodless 8y agoI think a useful question to ask candidates to help preserve my sanity would be: Which word means "moving towards the state of no longer having?" [ ] peacing out [ ] lossing [ ] losing [ ] loosing I'd probably accept #1 and #3.
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- mlthoughts2018 8y agoWhen I was first promoted to leading a team and tasked with hiring people, I was really scared because of the prevalence of articles and anecdotes claiming scary things like “80% of people in software can’t code” or “one bad hire will destroy your team.” After a few years of doing it, I think those fears are silly and it’s all a lot of overblown scare tactics to pressure us into cargo-cult adoption of what Google has done, usually through consulting firms that advise on the recruiting process or through new businesses like HackerRank, etc., that try to commoditize this fictional hiring fear. What has worked for me is trusting recommendations from my existing team, employees in a company, or my extended network. I’ve also selectively reached out to specific users of GitHub, Stack Overflow, Kaggle, and other community sites. I will also travel to university recruiting fairs, professional conference recruiting fairs, and sometimes local meetups or technology groups. I avoid opening up a job ad to the whole internet and accepting an undifferentiated stream of resumes. I avoid it not because it means I have to weed out “bad coders” or some nonsense — in many cases, most applicants are fully skilled enough for the job, and it’s just a big lie in our industry when people whine about inability to pass FizzBuzz. It keeps the incentives aligned towards hiring hyper-competitive 22-year-olds who just spent 10 months on leetcode and end up working for a lot less money, while nobody thinks about the impact on culture, long-term design or other expertise, diversity, etc. They just want the 22-year-old leetcode jockeys to arrange them as a doll collection in open-plan seating for VCs and investors to walk by. Instead I an internet stream of resumes because it’s not cost effective to put myself in a position where I or especially engineers on my team have to scour huge piles of resumes. I can’t stress this enough. You should not open yourself up to a firehose of resumes. And adding extra filters, like coldly making candidates complete a code test before they even speak to a human about the nature of the job is just a symptom of the contortions you have to do if you open yourself up to a firehose. Focus on improving the useful signal of the source of resumes. Keep diversifying and improving this, and take on small batches of higher signal resumes. If I could summarize what has worked efficiently for me: - keep job ads short and technically focused on the intended job duties - don’t open yourself to a firehose of resumes - use technically probing conversation, recursively digging into really technical details of the candidates past experiences or studies - code tests, if used at all, should be used lightly, involve no hazing-style algorithm trivia, and candidates should have options regarding their comfort and preferences (e.g. doing it on-site vs take-home, using their editor & programming environment of choice, generous time limit, and absolutelt nothing resembling HackerRank/coderpad/whiteboard hazing nonsense). - Keep initial interviews short and informative. - Use the max over a candidate’s performance in early rounds, and min in later rounds, explained below: - In early rounds, always have more than one interviewer to get multiple impressions, and use the best candidate impression to decide to continue them to the next round. - in late rounds, have many interviewers and use something closer to the candidate’s worst session to decide on an offer, but perhaps with some careful discussion to mitigate the chance it was unrepresentative. - And of course always give the candidate a chance to ask questions and see the facilities. I would expect a candidate to absolutely turn me down if they aren’t allowed to ask questions, and why shouldn’t they? Especially if my company comes across like we care more about cramming in one more trivia question than about the candidate’s curiosity and preferences, frankly then we don’t deserve to hire a good candidate. There really is such a woeful lack of Peopleware-style common sense in modern tech hiring; a lack of basic humanity or empathy to such a degree that it actually hurts business.
- gaius 8y agoThe secret of jobs is joining and targeting the right Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Nothing about that sentence makes any sense. Also “talents”?
- jacknews 8y ago"We want the best talent at the best possible price" What "price" range were you aiming for?
- nottorp 8y agoLet's see... i have a FB account for keeping in touch with some non technical friends who don't know better. I am in no groups and post nothing. Filtered out? Now about your form: Why would I like to work at ... whatever your company was called? You offer remote (big plus) and perhaps you pay well enough. (opens the main web page) Other reasons, no - you seem to be spammers so the only reason I'd work there is money. Coolest things you've ever done work wise? Legit ISH but you're filtering out competent people that did their job well at a boring job. Does writing a (admittedly pretty simple) kernel driver without having access to the hardware and having it work with (i think) just one modification count? Coolest things you've done privately? None of your bussiness. What are your prospects, dreams or expectations, career wise? No one in their right mind will answer honestly here, they will insert some canned interview lie. The remote question is legit, but it filters out everyone who has worked in an office and got sick of it. Only people who have worked remotely can answer something meaningful here. Expect another interview lie here. Btw my answer is "the most challenging thing is to pry out all the information you need out of people, and you need to be proactive about that".
- hellerve 8y agoYou want exceptional talent, you know that they need to be “pampered” to take the job, and yet you make them fill out a form before they even talk to you? That doesn’t sound like a great tactic. In my experience the single best free tactic for vetting candidates is having them be referred by your employees. Of course you’ll still have to look at them yourself like at any other candidate, but at least they have a direct reference you can talk to. If your employee is any good, chances are the people they want to work with/have previously worked with and enjoyed it are as well.
- HillaryBriss 8y agoyeah. i personally struggle sometimes to answer the question "Why do you want to work for XYZ company?" and that's because so much of why i want to work at a company boils down to the specific tasks and working conditions and the specific people i will interact with in that specific job. the overall company seems like a small factor a lot of times. also it's hard to know much about some new, private, very small startup anyway. how much info can i really obtain about something that small and that private?
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago"I like to work in interesting domains on interesting problems. From the outside, it looks like this describes your company so I'd like the opportunity to talk to you and learn more about your company."
- HillaryBriss 8y agonice. yeah. i like that sentiment, that perspective. i would feel good about answering in that that way. thanks. (for some reason, i always imagine companies want an answer like "Well, I've been dreaming about fixing bugs in billing systems for discount airline backend software since I was in the sixth grade. And since your company is the third largest discount airline backend software company in this part of Ohio, I just had to apply.")
- lainga 8y ago
- gk1 8y agoTL;DR - Post job ads in Facebook groups.
- bradgnar 8y agoartificially generate views for your blog to get more people aware of your company?
- himom 8y agoSomeone fix the title plz. “Talent” is both singular and plural when referring to employees.
- repsilat 8y agoIt's fine. You can interpret "talent" as a mass noun, in which case you wouldn't pluralise it ("There's a lot of talent here.") Alternatively, you could use it in another sense ("He is a great talent," and "Our employees are all great talents.") Interpreting the title in this sense is slightly awkward but certainly grammatical.
- lsaac 8y agoGood English is, clearly, not one of your company's core values..
- lsaac 8y agoThere is so much talk in the tech world about equality in the work force, yet, all too often, you hear lines like "separating the wheat from the chaff" regarding job applicants. Is there maybe a more respectful way to speak about people who are less talented than others?
- ggg9990 8y agoI think most of the talk is about increasing the number of women and non-Asian nonwhites. I’ve heard very little talk about being more respectful of people’s humanity (whether applicants, employees, or the general public).
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- iblaine 8y agoI fully expected to see jobs for 'Media Marketing Ninja' or 'Social Media Hacker', but the jobs listings are normal. Was not surprised to see it's an SEO company. Making the internet a better place one backlink at a time!
- BerislavLopac 8y agoAnd also about the "Why do you want to work for this company?" question: don't presume that I do. What I do want is learn more about you (feel free to ask me what caused that, though), and if I find you interested I might even want to work for you. But you need to sell the company first. Companies too often assume that a) applicants know everything about them, and b) are keen to work there from the beginning. But hiring is a two-way street, and the candidates -- especially the best ones, and especially in IT -- can often afford to shop around before deciding which offer to accept.
- gabrielblack 8y agoYou failed selling your company to me. Your tecnique seems just another philosopher's Stone that incompetent recruiters think were capable to find out and capable to engage magically IT specialists paying less as possible. Maybe it was possible only because, engaging remote workers, you can hire people in country with low cost of living.