Ask HN: Good ways to find local talent in small town? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Good ways to find local talent in small town?

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We're in Northern California about three hours outside San Francisco in the Sierra Foothills. I think overall this proximity to the Bay Area is a positive thing, but sometimes I get the feeling it creates a bit of a talent vacuum. The best of the best end up in the Bay Area, and because this area isn't terribly exciting most young people end up leaving when they finish high school anyway.

I'm curious if anyone else is in a similar situation and has any ideas. We've tried recruiters, Craig's List, and even help run a local tech group for some outreach. We've also experimented with remote team members with varying results. For now we're focused on finding someone local. Any other ideas or guidance?

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I once read an interesting solution to this specific problem on the old Joel on Software forum. In addition to offering a competitive salary for people to work at an odd location, you could offer a relocation bonus for people to leave. This assuages a large concern that some folks might have: that they'd love to work at your company, but if things go sour, they'd be stuck in Pigs Knuckle, Arkansas without any other job opportunities. I'm sure there are wrinkles to iron out, but that would directly target a mostly unrealized objection to relocating to a less desirable area.

"Stuck in Lodi again."

I don't remember who wrote this but an artist once wrote "If I was going to get out of Lodi I was going to have to paint my way out."

> For now we're focused on finding someone local. Any other ideas or guidance?

Read up on Growing Your Own Talent. Your looking for diamonds in the rough-- young, non-degreed types, with a mix of attitude, aptitude, and potential. Create a learning program with a solid growth path. Build-in the costs to pay them during this process. Everywhere you go, be on the look out for the kid who hustles, works hard, and demonstrates good people skills. Network with local Educators, Coaches, Religious leaders for referrals. Here's an Inc article on the subject> http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/talent-grow-your-own-or-hire-f...

Thanks for this great idea. I will be reaching out to the local community college today and may follow up with the local high school as well.

I once spent a long day interviewing in Lufkin Texas for a job in College Station. At some point someone observed, "Nobody moves to Lufkin unless their from Lufkin." I wasn't the best of the best, but I was good enough that they paid my way out for the interview, and when they didn't offer me the job in College Station but one in Lufkin instead, the observation was in fact astute.

If the young are leaving, I'd suggest focusing on finding someone older who is more amenable to the lifestyle. If there aren't any old developers locally, then there won't be any really good young one's. But you might get an older developer to relocate to a place without any action.

Good luck.

Thanks very much for the insight. This is definitely the approach we've taken up until now. Average age in our group is right around 40 and we're all family people who love the area and lifestyle it affords. The age thing isn't really the issue, just the number of applicants with relevant skills applying. I know they are around, maybe just a little more entrenched in their current roles. It is a lot of older people around, and I think because of that a lot of them (us) are already in a long term role or have moved on to consulting/contracting.

One strategy: Figure out what would entice your team to move from their entrenched roles, then figure out a way to offer that...both to your current staff and to prospective candidates.

Another is just to identify a local you want to bring on board and do what it takes to land that person.

As an aside, if you are doing remote, Scott Hanselman's 30 tips have some ideas if you have not seen them: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/30TipsForSuccessfulCommunicati...

I'm in the Calif. Foothills, I usually find most things on Craigslist,or the CA Jobs site.

Either you must not be near me, or it isn't the technologies I'm interested in, or I wans't what you were looking for.

I can offer that up in the hills you aren’t going to have a diverse skills environment. Either you will get some home-grown techs (like me), not very many of them, they usually move to SV or somewhere more tech friendly; or transplants from other places. So the more specific you are in what you want the less chance of finding talent. If you are willing to entertain other skillsets (if you are locked-in, maybe add in training option for highly skilled people in other platforms) you might have better luck.

Good luck

Thanks for the reply! We've done just this with our most recent hire. He had a lot of relevant experience but with a totally different tech stack. In the end we decided we'd rather have someone who has been there and done that with different tools than someone who has less overall experience but more comfort with our current setup. So far it looks like it has been a good decision!

We're in Nevada County building SAAS web and mobile apps. How about you?

Calaveras County, 90 Miles south.

Working on a better community directory and more web-app ( doplaces.com ), other than that spent the past couple decades working on applications for a non-profit (data collection, management and reporting) so developing an architecture (wouldn't call it a framework) along those lines; SAAS is something I've been thinking of - more for managing more wide-ranging distributed updates. you can see a few of the things I mess with at larrymade.com and portcommodore.com

Lot of unanswered questions:

How do other employers (not necessarily tech) motivate candidates to move there? Any natural attractions? Lots of outdoorsy people move to places like Colorado, Montana, Wyoming for hiking, camping, etc.

Is your salary competitive? If it's high compared to the cost of living, do you demonstrate that?

Is this just a job or a genuine opportunity? If the latter, how are you demonstrating that?

If it's really just a job (and that's OK), I'd figure out how to make remote developers work out. You have a lot of developers who already live in small towns with low cost of living, but it's their town and they don't want to move to yours. If you can leverage that, it's a win/win.

>Lots of outdoorsy people move to places like Colorado, Montana, Wyoming for hiking, camping, etc.

This one is interesting. I spent 2 months in a ski town in western canada this winter. The classic story of ski towns is that many, many people would love to live there (often so much as to create a housing problem) but the only jobs are in restaurants, hotels, bars. I've heard of a trained mechanical engineer working 3 years as a town tour guide until she landed an actual engineering gig for the local hydro company. The microbrewery in town is owned by a trained nuclear physicist who really just wanted to live in the mountains and still make a living.

If you're in a nice place for nature, do try and market to the outdoorsy crowd, I think there's a good few engineers in there.

Thanks for the response. To be honest I am fairly new on the hiring side of things and also relatively new to this specific part of the area. I don't have a solid response to most of your questions. Tech salaries seem to be all over the place. I would say given our location, job requirements, and company culture the salary range we offer is very competitive. That hasn't been an issue with anyone we've talked with yet. Being so close to SV does confuse things sometimes though.

I'm not sure I fully understand the difference between a job and a genuine opportunity. With a small team every member has a pretty large say in how things are done so everyone has the potential to really make a difference. It's definitely more than just getting work put in front of you. On the money side this is a mature bootstrapped company, so someone looking to gamble on stock options probably wouldn't be interested.

The area is generally pretty desirable. Beautiful surroundings, nice weather, lots of options for schools, interesting history, lots of great local food, relatively decent music scene, close to hiking, biking, skiing, rivers, and Tahoe. This is actually an area where a lot of tech people retire or semi-retire and open a satellite office. There's a lot of cool tech history with the Atari 2600 and a lot of broadcast video equipment being invented here. Not nearly as much web or software history though.

I've had a lot of this on my mind but I don't know I've done a very good job of communicating in any of our listings. We may try remote again, but will probably give local a little longer before we go that route. Thanks again, clearly this has me thinking and I'm hoping it will improve our future listings.

Yes, a lot of this will be internal and external polling/analysis to determine what's great about your company, position, and location and use that effectively in advertising and outreach.

Job vs. opportunity: it's about growth. You know the old saw about 5 years experience vs 1 year 5 times over. Good developers avoid the latter, so you have to show a clear path to growth. Isn't that what you wanted?

Good job descriptions are hard to write, but Lever does a good job with them. I recommend looking at theirs for inspiration: https://lever.co/jobs.html

Also, I'm sure you didn't want to look like you were trying to get free advertising here, but it would have been helpful to get links to your company and jobs for reference.

Mail your homepage to mdcrawford@gmail.com and I'll give you an entry at http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/

No charge, no time limit.

Sent! Thanks very much!

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