Finding and hiring developers

Check In: Group is a mix of experienced hiring managers, learning hiring managers, and developers seeking better oppotunities

Phases of hiring:

Sourcing is a big job! Reach out to local coding organizations, particularly those that support women and underrepresented minorities: [1] [2] [3] [4]

Also keep an eye on sites focused on your area of interest: idealist news-nerds (journalism) StackOverflow or StackExchange sites specific to your work advertise w/communities focus on your work

and conferences, like: NPDev Dreamforce - nonprofits track

Recruiters often don’t help — they block the candidates from knowing who is doing the hiring and what is their mission.

Put it on your website, you don’t always get walk-ins but these can be some of your best candidates.

Many HR platforms will cross-post against many systems. It doesn’t suck.

Job Descriptions

Your job posting is an ad, maybe your internal title isn’t the attention-grabbing headline you wish it was. Try more than one!

Having clear expectations on the job description can help candidates distinguish their dream job with a real, focused agenda and a grab-bag of every tech dream your org has ever had.

Interviews

Generally these are composed of

   Resume Pass
   Phone Screen
   Technical Screen

Resume Pass — this is so random, try to be consistent

Phone Screen — Our recommended questions:

what technologies are you excited about that you haven’t had a chance to work with? what is the most important thing to you? (should demonstrate mission affiliation) will i want to spend 4 hours with this person?

know what your team dynamics are and will this person fit? who is an engineer vs a web developer/problem solver

Eng #10 is all technical vetting Eng #1 is all product/process vetting to find out who these folks are

“tell me about a problem that you’ve solved?” vs “tell me about your favorite/least favorite job you’ve had”

   Why are you leaving your current job? (so, this is controversial)
   tell us about a project you worked on that failed?
   win the lottery and win a million $$ what do you do
       when its $100 million what do you do

Technical Vetting Process:

   have a senior dev in-house or a consultant do a technical screen (make sure your consultant is on the same page with you for what matters and understands the mission/scope of the position)
   made a clone of their actual project, created GitHub issues for them to choose from
   senior dev made a PR implementing a feature, see if they notice problems/security vulnerabilities

Salary Expectations

Maybe check out glassdoor or https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/salary

mexico city ($35/hr) london ($80lbs/hr) full-time vs contracting changes the rate (CAN $100-$150/hr) (US $175/hr) Bay area ($120/hr-$250)

Managing Devs

Have a project/product manager to explain and proxy the organizations goals, especially when working with consultants

Don’t put the dev into every meeting, make sure they are accountable to someone who can review their work, probably worth keeping a trusted consultant around if you don’t have a senior person.