GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - How To Find Great People To Work For You

I thought this was a fairly concise ShoeBitch blog post on summing up hiring. Especially when it comes to talented programmer/designers. Enjoy.

Quote:

One of the questions I get asked the most is how we find good talent.. or better yet where.

It kind of depends on what your looking for.

If you are looking for talent specific people like graphics or programing those are a lot harder to find then if you are looking for a general book keeper. For the purpose to keep them separate in this post I will refer to graphics and programing help as ?skilled talent?.

Skilled Talented specific people that you want on your team are not currently out of work. They are not combing the classifieds looking for a job. The people you want ot build your business around are not found on Elance or rent-a-coder. There is a reason these people are out of work.

So where do you find these people and approach them?

In my case I found skilled talent on forums or on IRC. David was the first programmer I hired who actually worked out? and worked out really well (enough that he is now a partner in the company). I had actually known him and many other talented people from a IRC channel since the mid 90?s. One day I was bitching about how I was never going to hire another remote worker again and he messaged me and said he was pretty good and would like a shot at whatever I needed done. He also said money was not a issue he just wanted to show me what he could do.

That is another thing you will find with talented skilled people. A lot of times you will find they are not motivated by money as much as being a part of something bigger AND being able to make a difference.

I am getting a little bit off track here but really the best place I have found people is just to hang around forums and irc chat rooms around the topic they care about. Some of the most talented programmers in the world are on efnet IRC.

I have not had to hire any new skilled talent lately but if I had to tomorrow I think twitter would be an amazing tool to find people. I would search for my location for people talking about keywords I was interested in. For instance if I was looking for a PHP programmer I could just search for people in nebraska talking about PHP. EASY! From there I could establish a dialog on twitter or try to find the person on linked-in or facebook or wherever.

For skilled positions I dont give a rats ass about college. I want someone with experience.

But what about a person to run your office? What about someone to run your PPC campaigns?

This is actually one of the few times where living in Nebraska has its advantages. I like to hire younger people from VERY rural areas who have just graduated college or still in college.

Why rural areas? Well people from rural areas farm? and farm families bust their asses as soon as they can walk. They get up at the ass crack of dawn and work until the sun goes down. They all help out and they have a work ethic that is unreal. They are also very trustworthy.

I can teach many things to people coming into our company. 2 things I can?t teach that are invaluable are work ethic and honesty.

The reason I like to get people before they enter the ?work world? is because once they do they get THAT mindset and that is not who we are looking for. I want people who LIVE for this company. I want people I can text at 11pm a question and they text me back. I want people who are constantly thinking of ways to improve what we are doing.

Once people are in the ?work world? to long they get accustomed to that 9-5 mentality of ?this is what I do and its all I do? and at 5pm I go home and don?t think about work until 9am the next day.

We don?t want those people? we don?t want employees? we want partners in our business.

Everyone here is on track to become a partner in the company.

Well that is how we do it and my views on it. Hopefully it helps. Feel free to throw your tips on how you find great people to work for you.

http://www.shoemoney.com/