Hiring well is hard
swombat.com
swombat.com
Stop assuming that the word 'start-up' makes you more appealing.
There are some incredibly talented developers working for start-ups across the UK and Europe. I have a significant amount of experience in trying to source the top talent in Europe and I can categorically state, the majority of 'top talent' don't work for, and have little interest in working for a start-up. They work for established organisations that offer legitimate career opportunities, stability and the financial backing to give them peace of mind.
...Europe has a shortage of talent
Debatable. I've been first hand witness to startups struggling to hire the best talent to the point where it almost cripples their business. I've also witnessed established organisations having a hard time filling their vacancies. There isn't a talent shortage. There is, however, a shortage of great developers.
Hiring well is hard. It's incredibly hard. That's why recruitment companies exist and that's why recruitment companies make billions annually. That's also why I'm convinced there is a ridiculous amount of money to be made in offering a solution that overshadows the corrupt and unethical business practices the recruitment industry perpetrates.
Not sure I understand the distinction here?
Guess which one of the three most companies are chasing.
Want to work longer hours for lesser money and a lot more risk ? For a lot of people the answer to that is no.
Furthermore, large established companies do have a lot of brand value. Getting to say "I worked for Google" and "I worked for X unknown startup that tanked after 2 years but we had a good run" are very different things.
Unfortunately, it's hard to sell risky prospects to people. The going gets even tougher for startups without fat funding rounds because they can't really afford to pay top dollar. Then their only hope is to find fresh but relatively inexperienced talent. Also, a lot of programmers who are interested in startups would also ask themselves "Why should I work with these guys when I could start my own stuff up ?"
For those that love and crave the excitement of working at a startup and making a real difference in your product - well, maybe there should be a place where you can hire such folks ;D (startup idea!)
Looking at the job ad on your site, you ask for three attributes:
Ability to communicate effectively, self motivated, flexible and works well under deadlines.
Advanced knowledge in HTML, CSS and Javascript with in-depth knowledge of DOM
3rd Party API Integration ( Twitter, Facebook , Maps, etc.)
Experience with jQuery
SVN and QA tools.
Well-versed in design and concept development
Advanced knowledge of responsive design for mobile
Knowledge of tools /apps such as Adobe Creative Suite
Not trying to be rude here, but it seems to me your job ad was probably asking too much in one person. I've been a full-stack developer for ~10 years, computer science PhD, work with a designer at my current startup, and I wouldn't have felt qualified. Maybe I'm misreading it, but maybe that's why you didn't get the applicants you wanted?
You do need good people, but I think that focussing on rockstars will give poorer results in the long run. Are they going to stay when stuff gets more mundane? Are they going to do the boring stuff? Are they going to work well together iwth other people in the team. My experience tells me to get good people that get stuff done, so that the founder(s) can focus on the entrepreneurial part.
But I agree most with this idea that you want to hire "the best", or "highly talented". The thing is, no one started out as a great employee, with bags of talent. The rare few that got very good, very fast, were snapped up by the worlds of finance, corporations, or are already Director of Engineering in a start up. (Hint: you can't afford them unless you offer them a painful amount of equity).
Everyone else, early in their career, needs training, mentoring, coaching, regular feedback cycles, a manager that is willing to have the open and frank conversations about what they should and shouldn't focus on to achieve more results. You have to grow talent.
So "good people that get stuff done"... it's a classic Joel on Software type statement. How do you find them? I meet a lot of people who never "get stuff done"... but why is that? Is it because they are lazy? Bored? Incompetant? OK, you don't want these guys. But what about: they are perfectionists and nothing is ever quite right to be called finished? Or do they always find themselves stuck trying to micro-optimize? Or are they always "late" because they got into the design, and realised the use case was wrong, so they fixed the use-case first? This second class have a lot of potential, with little "extra" effort.
I started looking for my first hire a few months ago, and it hasn't been easy. But in that time I've come across plenty of people that don't have the skills or experience I require… they do however have a lot of motivation. I'm currently helping three people learn the fundamentals of web development, and every day I'm surprised at how fast they pick things up. In-house training is the way forward for me.
I'm currently looking for a (mainly frontend) webdeveloper, and even finding an intern proves to be quite difficult so far.
Oh and a bit off topic, but just to mention that one of the other ‘guys’ is a girl… and after a few months of seeing her code, I think every team should be comprised of as many women as there are men (and be more diverse in general). It might just be her, but she approaches some problems in a completely different way to the rest of the team and her perspective has saved us from banging our heads against the wall many times. She also notices things that the rest of us are oblivious to. One day I'll get around to writing a blog post about it, haha.
In short, I would love to have the resources and time to train more people up from scratch – I never considered it before, it's all been positive so far. But, for most of the heavy lifting I'm still relying on either myself or freelancers. As for finding interns, I just asked around friends and family… it turns out there's a _lot_ of people that have thought about web development at some point but don't have a clue where to start – for some reason they thought they had to be good at maths or art.
Edit: just to clarify, they aren't interns… at the moment it's sort of informal class. We have a project that we work on over weekends (and a little bit during the week) . At the rate they're going, I would hire them in 6 or so months though.
It's understandable, but we shouldn't be surprised that not everyone can succeed at that.
They want a bargain (ask them if they also expect to pay in the top 5 percentile), a college degree and experience with exactly the technology they have now.