S7 Roundtable

October, 2012

Hakon Verespej

Who am I?

MS, Computer Science

8 years as a software engineer

And now I’m interested in recruiting…

What Triggered the Interest?

What Triggered the Interest?

What Triggered the Interest?

Imagine a team of 3, called T1:

Performance of member 1 = 1

Performance of member 2 = 2

Performance of member 3 = 2

a = 1

Performance(T1) = 1x1 + 1x2 + 1x2 = 5

What Triggered the Interest?

Now imagine another team, T2:

Performance of member 1 = 1

Performance of member 2 = 1

Performance of member 3 = 1

a = 2

Performance(T2) = 2x1 + 2x1 + 2x1 = 6

What Triggered the Interest?

We want both top performers and a better a

Finding and hiring people who produce great results and make a great team takes great skill

Great recruiters are amazing!

“…leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with ‘where’ but with ‘who.’ They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. And they stick with that discipline—first the people, then the direction—no matter how dire the circumstances.”

- Jim Collins, author Good to Great

What is recruiting?

Student’s view: Gatekeepers you have to schmooze for a shot at the jobs you want

Engineer’s view: Gatekeepers shielding us from the people we want on our team

These are myopic views and show an embarrassing lack of knowledge

What is recruiting?

Fortunately, I’ve come to grips with reality!

“I am convinced that nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day you bet on people, not on strategies.”

- Lawrence Bossidy, former COO of GE

What is recruiting?

A better question might be what isn’t recruiting?

Recruiting involves:• Strategy• Marketing• Sales• Research• Detective work• Psychology• Empathy• Negotiation• Creativity• Analytics

The most fun I’ve had this year

SourceCon - special thanks to Amybeth!

I had no idea any of this stuff was going on!

Sourcer = super smart and super passionate

I wonder…

Why isn’t there more collaboration and idea sharing?

Anyone interested in a sourcing hackathon?

“You need to have a collaborative hiring process.”

- Steve Jobs

Something useful

To find local javascript devs who participate in local javascript meetups, go to Google and:

site:meetup.com inurl:members intitle:seattle intitle:javascript

You can email them right from meetup.com!

Something useful

Take it a step further and get an email whenever someone new joins!

See http://www.google.com/alerts

Something useful

If you want to get really crazy, see http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

How about having an email with a LinkedIn profile sent to your team’s email group every time someone joins a Seattle javascript user group?

Thanks!