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Comment by mrcold | Hacker News Reader

You touched the exact reason I don't use stackoverflow careers. Everybody there expects higher quality developers and all of them offer a "competitive salary". Why would I waste my time applying.

If you want better quality, offer something better in return. Offer an amazing salary. Double the market. Triple. Fuck it, a truckload of money and 72 new virgins every day. Something that justifies your increased demands and expectations. Until then, the traditional route works better for me too. Because I get the exact same "competitive offer", but employer expectations are normal instead of stupid.

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Perhaps it is not apparent from my original post - I am a developer... I'm trying to recruit someone for my team. Of course I've specified a salary range (which is slightly higher than the local average, based on payscale) and I've been as specific as possible on the technology and benefits...

Sadly all I got so far are applications coming from India and China from people who clearly didn't read the ad and will just apply to anything.

Can I see your ad?

Sure, here it is: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/84952/software-develop...

As noted elsewhere in the thread, please keep in mind that salaries in Europe are generally much lower compared to the States :)

I see you've defended the salary range elsewhere in this conversation, but I second the feeling that it's low. My rule of thumb is that if an ad/recruiter says "competitive salary" it probably isn't, and it worked out here also.

I'll take your word for it that in Dublin it's a fair salary---but if you have a small hiring pool and do nothing to stand out, you shouldn't complain that SO Careers gives you few leads.

Also I wonder about your expectations. You call this a good salary "for a developer at the beginning of his career." But you are looking for C#, Angular, Python, R, Matlab, Mongo, and Hadoop. Yikes! Maybe you should cut it back to just C#, put "Junior Developer" in the title, and say you'll provide training time+budget for the other techs. Or leave the requirements and offer a range that is good for someone with 5-10 years experience.

Sorry to be so critical. Best of luck to you. . . .

No worries, every constructive feedback is welcome! Although I feel you're a bit harsh on the requires skills section - only c# and JavaScript are listed in the "needs", all the rest is divided between "nice to have" and "bonus".

We are definitely going to consider all the suggestions in this thread, including hiring remote workers and increase our investment to stand out more.

In a way, what is making me doubt the tool is that I haven't received a single application that I could even consider interviewing - just clearly copypasted messages from developers on the other side of the world. I guess I'll see it through when we switch to other candidate search platforms in a few days...

Re "Nice to have"---acknowledged, but. . . . The junior programmers I know will still be intimidated by that list. And the intermediate/senior programmers will see it and wonder why you're offering so little. So it seems like the ad is conflicted.

If someone really needs those skills to do the job, then perhaps you can transform a negative into a positive: "New hire will receive on-the-job training time and budget in Mongo, Python, and Hadoop." That would attract a lot of people! And probably adding training is cheaper than raising the salary.

Once your ad has a clear message, perhaps you can use it in more targeted venues than SO. Imagine a CS student at Dublin University seeing a flier on their department bulletin board:

    Junior C# Developer Wanted
    Excellent Salary
    Will Train in Python, Mongo, Hadoop

That's something you might even be able to send to a couple professors and ask if they could pass it on to any outstanding seniors.

Even better would be to s/Excellent Salary/€35 - 45k/.

That actually makes a lot of sense, thanks for the pointer!

I also second that the term "competitive salary" is toxic. In my experience, it just means that the Employer is only look for a bargain and not talent, plus the employer is not sure of the expectations which with lead to bumpy ride. I do not even bother reading the ad further. I have had my share of jerk employers. I would rather be jobless than be employed by a jerk.

Also, I am a developer with 4 yrs experience in C#. But from my exposure and that of others who work on C#, its more of a backend crowd and Javascript is only used for testing out Node.js or playing with JSON. I am also involved in data analysis. The only time I used Jquery was when I tried to make my data look pretty using Bootstrap and jquery comes bundled with it.

It might be the way I work is different from yours but AngularJS & C# are two different worlds and anyone who understands C# will be able to pick up Javascript by referring MozillaDN.

Now, this is just my personal opinion and I do not want to be attacked for my views. But I feel that now a days, SO has lost its quality and answers are just copy pasted. Mainly the answers have no relation to the question. Especially when you try to compare 2 technologies, the answers are more like fanboys chants than voice of experience.

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