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3 Creative Ways to Recruit Developers

Recruiting talented developers in this market is still extremely difficult. How should a recruiter find the talent (PHP, Ruby, MySQL, iPhone, .NET, Java) your clients need? I outline a few creative out of the box solutions below.

Disclosure: I work as the lead developer at AppDevAndMarketing.com . This article in no way suggests we’ve used any of these methods.

Update on 4/15/2011: Ya, I’ve had to resort to all these methods and they’ve worked for us. 😀

1. Turn your project managers, account executives and marketers into coders. This is a fairly cheap investment with a high ROI. It is cheaper than paying out a bounty, and you already trust these folks. Send them to iPhoneDev Bootcamp now! Just be sure to prepare their machines for the development they’ll need to do. I tried this at a previous place of employment with great results! If you were trained by me and are reading this, please ask for a raise.

2. Look for places not so obvious. Use dating sites to find talent. Ya, I know, you haven’t used that match.com account in awhile, or have sworn of okaycupid.com or JDate, but guess what. For you bleeding edge types, try the iPhone, dating app, Skout. Although s/he might not be the person of your dreams, s/he might have the talent you need. The key take away is to use unexpected social media spaces for recruiting. Don’t be sleazy or sly about it. A simple, “Hi, I read your profile. You seem very talented in X. I’d actually like to hire you. Coffee or drinks?”

3. Use IRC. If you’re smart enough to do this, you probably shouldn’t be recruiting, but IRC is this best place to find pure, raw talent. Details on how to get onto IRC can be found on Google, but the best guide for newbies can be found on this gaming site.

There’s one more special place that I haven’t revealed that will guarantee you top talent every time. Leave a comment and I’ll contact you with that exclusive place to find developers.

5 replies on “3 Creative Ways to Recruit Developers”

I just came across your blog whilst preparing for a Recruiter position interview. Believe me, your tips will help me a lot. I would love to know that secret resource for finding top talent. Thanks!

I also stumbled on your post and was wondering if you could share your secret tip on recruiting developers. Thanks for sharing your experience.

I am a Recruiter/HR Manager searching for top talent, which is tough right now! I would love to know your secret tip! Thank you!

Hi Folks,

Since it’s been awhile I’ve actually got 2 secret tips.

My first secret tip is taken from Neil Strauss’ “The Game.” If you see someone with a laptop that looks like a coder, just walk up and ask, “Hey, are you a coder?” This is especially easy if you are female and the coder is a straight male.

My second is to scour http://github.com/ for coders. You can actually see their code and how many followers a coder has is a good gauge of the relevancy of what they are working on.

Cheers, Barce

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