Recruiting is hard

We (Profian) are currently looking to recruit some software engineers. Now, I’ve been involved in hiring people before – on the interviewing side, at least – but actually doing the recruiting is a completely new experience for me. And it’s difficult. As the CEO of a start-up, however, it turns out that it’s pretty much down to me to manage the process, from identifying the right sort of person, to writing a job advert (see above), to finding places to place it, to short-listing candidates, interviewing them and then introducing them to the rest of the team. Not to mention agreeing a start date, “compensation package” (how much they get paid) and all that. Then there’s the process of on-boarding them (getting contracts sorted, getting them email addresses, etc.), and least some of which I’m pleased to say I have some help with.

The actual recruiting stuff is difficult, though. Recruitment consultants get a bad rap, and there are some dodgy ones, but I’m sure most of them are doing the best they can and are honest people. You might even be happy to introduce some of them to your family. Just a few. But, like so many other things about being start-up founder, it turns out that there comes a time when you have to say to yourself: “well, I could probably learn to do this – maybe not well, but with some degree of competence – but it’s just not worth my time. It’s going to be easier, and actually cheaper in the long run, to outsource this work to somebody who is, frankly, more of an expert than I’ll ever be, would ever want to be, or could ever be. And so I’ve found someone to work with.

What’s really interesting when you find somebody to help you with a new task is the time it takes to mesh your two worlds. I’m a software guy, a we’re looking for software people. I need to explain to the recruitment consultant not only what skills we’re looking for, but what phrases, when they appear on a LinkedIn page or CV[1], are actually red flags. In terms of phrases we’re looking for (or are nice to haves), I’d already mentioned “open source” to the recruitment consultant, but it was only on looking over some possible candidates that I realised that “FOSS” should be in there, too. A person whose current role is “Tech lead” is much more likely to be a fit than “Technical manager”. What’s the difference between a “cloud architect” and a “systems architect”? Is “Assembly” different to “WebAssembly” (yes! – oh, and the latter is sometimes shortened to “Wasm”).

There are, of course, recruitment consultants who specialise in particular technical fields, but what we’re doing (see the Enarx project) is so specialised and so new that I really don’t think that there are likely to be any specialist recruiters anywhere in the world (yet).

So, I feel lucky that I’ve managed to find someone who seems to get not only where we’re coming from as a company, but also the sorts of people we’re looking for. He wisely suggested that we spend some time going over some possible candidates so he could watch me identifying people who were a definite “no” – as useful for him as a definite “must interview”. Hopefully we’ll start to find some really strong candidates soon. If you think you might be one of them, please get in touch!

(Oh – and yes, I’ve invited him to meet my family.)

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1 – that’s “resume” for our US friends.