Given in Zurich at SoCraTes Day Switzerland – Friday, 21st September 2018, by Iwan Gulenko (iwan@coderfit.com).

1. 7 ways how to find and hire
software engineers
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

2. Agenda
1. Preamble
2. Networks
3. Think inbound
4. Cold outreach
5. Recruiters/Agencies
6. Meetups/events/conferences
7. “Hiring startups”
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

3. Preamble
- You're have other things to do than recruitment.
- Much of recruitment will feel like wasted work.
- Start by being clear on what exactly you're looking for. List specific
criteria a good hire should have.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

4. Personal networks
• Most important source
• With personal connections you have warm leads:
1. Make a list of the best people you know, whether you think they're available or not. Go through
your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and your memory.
2. Invite them to a meeting and ask them to join you.
3. Whatever they answer, ask “who would you most want to work with?” Ask for an intro to this
person. Goto 2.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

5. Long term: Think inbound
- As a no-name firm you likely won't get much organic inbound interest.
- The quickest way to generate this is posting on job sites. The job postings should be sites
with an engineering audience, cheap or free: freshjobs.ch, whoishiring.io, monthly HN who-
is-hiring. Expensive: stackoverflow jobs etc.
- To increase conversion, you can create content that appeals to engineers, e.g., about
the technical choices you've made. This is a one time cost, but will help long term.
- Most companies have generic job postings that all sound the same. Don’t do this.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

6. Short term: Cold outreach
- Use career/recruiting specific platforms like LinkedIn or, even better, places where engineers
spend time like Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit and GitHub.
- Reach out to candidates and optimise messaging to get more responses. If you send enough
messages this approach will work. Use: RRR (Relevance, Reward, Request).
- The disadvantage is it's very time consuming and will feel like spam (sometimes it is).
You can give someone else access to your email to send the messages on your behalf and
then you handle the replies.
- Always follow up. iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

7. …
Cold outreach: 11 reminder-emails over the course of four
months.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

8. Recruiters/Agencies
- A technical recruiter’s strategy probably will be using cold outreach and it's
unlikely they'll achieve higher response rates than messages coming from a CXO/
technical employee.
- Before working with a recruiter make sure you've invested time in really
training them on how to pitch your company well. Give them all the information
they need, then ask them to pitch it back to you. Do the same with agencies.
- Beware that bad agencies can suck up a lot of your time with little ROI.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

9. Meetups/events/conferences
- Events have a high variance and unpredictable success rate.
- Even if you attend great technical meetups and you're the right type of “people-person”, it’s
unlikely you'll make a hire quickly.
- It’s a good way to build a network of smart people, which will become valuable in the long
term.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

10. “Hiring startups”
- Recruiting startups like Triplebyte, Hired, Honeypot, talent.io, workshape.io, or coderfit.com
are marketplaces. Candidates on one side and firms on the other. Candidates get more
options and to firms try to save time.
- Some of the marketplaces will also do a technical evaluation or add urgency so the
applicant finds a job quickly.
- No big players yet in Switzerland or clear winner in Europe.
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

11. Summary
- Once you know how (wording, content) to pitch your company to engineers, you can
grow channels to get this message out to potential applicants.
- Be prepared for a lot of struggle.
Good luck!
iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko

12. Sources
https://triplebyte.com/blog/hiring-your-first-engineer
https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/why-software-engineers-dont-get-jobs-three-horror-
stories-77fd1ae3b875
https://stripe.com/blog/startup-advice-cold-recruiting
https://whoishiring.io
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17442187
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/
https://freshjobs.ch/
https://jobs.coderfit.com/
https://www.workshape.io/
http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-interview-your-interviewers/ iwan@coderfit.com
@iwangulenko