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Comment by gt2 | Hacker News Reader

1. Try your network. You probably know someone who works in these areas. You could ask them to speak with them.

2. Ask for their portfolio/employment history. Then ask for references for those projects/jobs. This will whittle down 90% of candidates as many don't have prior experience they can show, or any references.

3. Contract to hire. Give them a 2 week to 1 month shot at delivering results you like, and then hire them. Assumedly are not a huge company (sounds like you have no other similar role holders to interview the new recruits) so you don't need to take the responsibility of hiring people with the huge risk that comes with that. Give them a paid trial. Or depending on your state and risk tolerance, hire fast and fire fast.

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Depending on the complexity of the ecosystem and the experience of the developer 2 weeks to 1 month might not be enough time. You'd also want to be worried about the code slinger that just starts throwing code at a problem and looks like a rockstar in the first couple months, but by month 6 has ground to a halt because they can't change the code they wrote a few months ago.

Why would anybody who’s any good do a 1 month contract to hire?

I'm a huge fan of doing a small relevant project at a reduced price. It's a win-win. I, the freelancer, don't waste my time with silly coding exercises, instead, I get paid to do actual work, and you, the employer, get real impression how it is to work with me under realistic condition plus on top of it a result that you can (hopefully) use, so you haven't wasted your time and money either. Even better, should we continue working with each other, I have already had an introduction to your project and can proceed from there.

That sounds great if you're hiring a long term contractor. But, if you're hiring an employee, either already working (which usually presents issues with existing employment agreements), or they're giving up a week's worth of a job search to do this (which risks wasting a lot of a candidate's time). When I can get a job with a recruiter chat, 1 phone screen, and an onsite, and spend a total of 1 day on a company to get a job, why should I spend an entire week?

> so you don't need to take the responsibility of hiring people with the huge risk that comes with that.

There's plenty of people who won't do it -- they can go to FAANG and established companies all over the world. Good for them. There's a good amount of great people, often the hustlers you need for a smaller business, who would be interested in doing it. It's only one possibility. As I said, the other option is showing portfolio/past experience with references, which if checked well is a good indicator.

Also I said this because the OP said one of the positions was sales, which usually has compensation highly attached to results, so those guys are used to it. Might even say completely attached to results, as they are shown the door if they aren't giving results.

Not even FAANG. I would say a majority of companies do the pattern of recruiter call, 1-2 phone screens, and 1/2-1 day onsite. For the candidate, it's a no brainer: invest a week or invest a day. The end result is approximately the same either way, unless your company is super special in some manner.

Yeah, I hear ya. But he said sales and graphic designer. I think that's a bit different than developer or management.

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