Ask HN: Advice for interviewing/first time hiring
We finally reached a stage where we can start bringing on developers. Anyone got some awesome advice or cautions for hiring?
1) In addition to technical skills, look for values and fit. Is this someone you want representing your firm? Is this someone you want to share 2000+ hours a year with for the next few years?
2) Do your best to have each hire bring something unique that nobody (especially you!) else is good at.
3) Look for trajectory in addition to location. For example: If there are two people of the same ability, and it took one person 7 years to get there, and the other 3, the junior person is learning faster. You don't want to hire people who have already peaked, as your organization and it's needs will grow.
4) No matter how busy you are, it's always ok to wait if you haven't found the right person. The cost of a bad hire is enormous, and it's a large market. It's ok missing three good hires if the process allows you to miss one bad hire.
5) For more tips, go to www.joelonsoftware.com and page down to the section listing his posts for recruiters. You don't have to follow 100% of what he says, but investing a few hours will help a lot.
2) Make a test with problems unique to your space - aka if you write scheduling software, have the test use some date/time functions or if you write a search engine have them write a simple DOM tree parser. Nothing crazy complicated, but enough to give you an idea of what they are made of. Let them take the test home to complete, then give them feedback about their answers after they return it and see if/what changes they make in response to your feedback. This gives you a good idea if they are willing to adapt and learn in your problem space, and if they can take constructive feedback.
http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/01/lean-hiring-tip... http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.ht... http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phon...
You might also find this link to be useful, but I wrote it myself so ymmv http://fragile.org.uk/2010/03/anatomy-of-a-technical-intervi...
1.Do not hire devs without taking a test.
2.Hire developers for their "skills" and not for your affiliations with them.
3.Hire someone who is self learning and knows type of product/platform you are working on.
Why you may ask:
1. Test measures the work speed and efficiency
2. Respect people for their skills not for your relationship with them (eg. friend, relative etc..)
3. So that you won't waste time giving them keywords to Google.