[ale] question about hiring developers

[Paul McKibben]

Chris,

I used to be a team lead with significant input into the hiring process (I
left that company and am now an independent consultant).  I found it nearly
impossible to find good people.  As I'm sure you understand, it took more
than just finding people with the right education and the right skill set:
it involved finding people who KNEW HOW TO THINK, and who could WORK WITH
YOUR TEAM.  No job board or body shop is going to help you find that.

I am convinced that the only way to find good people is to be involved in
the developer community through user groups like ALE, the Atlanta PHP User
Group, and any other groups relevant to the profession and skills you're
hiring for, and GET TO KNOW the people in those groups.  Also, talk to other
developers you trust and see if they can recommend anybody.  The best hires
I've had are people who I already knew, or at least who my friends knew.
Forget monster.com and the other job boards--they will not help you.  By and
large, the best and brightest rarely post their resumes on job boards
because they already have jobs they are happy with, and when they're
unhappy, their next job is just a phone call to a friend away.

Having to hire somebody in AZ when you live in Atlanta is going to be a real
problem--clearly your strongest network will be here in Atlanta.  Maybe you
can convince your management to back off on that requirement.  Otherwise, is
relocation a possibility if you find a good person here?  How often are you
in AZ?  Any chance of getting involved with user groups there?

Recommended reading on finding and hiring the best and brightest:

http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html (check out
his his other articles, too)
http://asktheheadhunter.com (usually from a job seeker's perspective, but
good info for those on the hiring side too)

Best of luck, and feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions.

--Paul

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 3:42 PM, <ale-request at ale.org> wrote:

>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:40:54 -0400
> From: "Atlanta Geek" <atlantageek at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ale] question about hiring developers
> To: ale at ale.org
> Message-ID:
>        <dd7c97280807151140r6f5fae48qf34362c0a3935540 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> When we were hiring 1.5 years ago it was difficult to find a perl guy
> at <$70,000 here in Atlanta even though the work environment was good
> back then.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 2:13 PM, Chris Fowler
> <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com> wrote:
> > You should compare the cost of living in Phoenix Arizona.
> >
> > At the current gas rate here in Atlanta, $60k could be a bit low.
> > Especially if the
> > job requires driving into the office each an every day.  Luckily I
> > stopped that madness
> > years ago.
> >
> > I thought that if I did ever look for another job that I would do
> > something radical and request compensation based on my expenses.  If
> > they really want me onsite then my compensation will be higher due to
> > $4/gal gas.  If I'm at home then I can pass those savings on to my
> > employer.  Maybe when the employer has to pay for gas they are open to
> > ways to save that money.
> >
> > I don't want to upset job lookers here but what you might want to try is
> > to post the job
> > and not post the salary.  See what hits you get and make decisions based
> > on that.  If you get now hits then possibly there are no qualified
> > people in Phoenix.  If you do get hits then you need to tell management
> > that they need to either look for another developer in another city to
> > work remote or raise their rate.
> >
> >
> > Chris Kleeschulte wrote:
> >> So I am an IT director for a company based in Phoenix, AZ. Really, I
> >> am a computer scientist would agreed to manage a team of 3 developers.
> >> I have been in charge of hiring new people for our growing business,
> >> but I am really having a hard time finding people. Not just
> >> "qualified" people, just people in general.
> >>
> >> I live in Atlanta and work from home, but upper management wants
> >> someone on site in AZ. I have advertised on Craig's and with the LUG's
> >> in the area. At this point, is it worth my time to go to monster and
> >> all the big job sites?
> >>
> >> What are your feelings on how to hire quality people in general? I am
> >> a bit unskilled in selecting the right people. I had a pipe dream that
> >> offering a job with pay of over 60K would just bring in applicants.
> >> This job is all linux all day and programming in PHP, Ruby, Python. I
> >> would jump at this job if it were me needing a gig.
> >>
> >> I have also checked what the market rate for this type of job should
> >> pay. This is a really rough estimate, but what should a programmer
> >> with imperative type programming experience (2-3 years) be paid?  I
> >> have friends on the Microsoft side that work as Exchange architects
> >> and they make 120K+. Is this high rate just an anomaly, or do people
> >> on the Microsoft really make that kind of coin?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Chris Kleeschulte
> >>
> >>
>
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