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How to find specialist partner or employees these days?

Recruiting is changing at a fast pace these days. It seems to me there are now many more channels than just 5 years ago. Recruiting companies become SAAS, thin matchmakers, even paid service for candidates.

What are the patterns we see today to hire a specialist?

This question seems pretty broad, so here is a concrete example I had in mind for this question.

Let’s assume that I want to create a company with core skills I don’t have. I’m the software guy, and the target business requires a chip-designer hardware guy, a Physics specialist (radiation), and another Physics specialist (antennas). Pretty much a set of sharp people. These people could be partners (co-founders) or employees. I wonder what are efficient and cost-effective “services” or means that one could use these days. Networking (including social media) and alumni may still be the most powerful means to find reliable people, but how about all that out-of-band information out there?

Answer 3426

There are a lot of ways to go about recruiting. Even on a budget.

First create a job profile or a job description which has the responsibilities for the job, working hours, pay etc. Then create a candidate profile which is the skills qualifications and experiences you think the person needs to have to do the job. You can also include a ideal candidate profile for your own use which includes specifics like age range, behavioural aspects etc that you don’t want to publish but are needed to determine a fit for the company.

Then determine the weed out format. You can collect resumes and manually weed them out and invite selected candidates to sets of interviews. Or you can use an online system like taleo to manage your applications and even do an on line weed out if the candidate does not meet requirements (You get a lot of this). Plan out the interview format. How many interviews, what do you want to know about the applicant, what questions can you ask to find that out legally (some questions are illegal).

Lot of companies in order to save time would simply use a recruiting service. After you do the job description and profiles, the recruitment agency would do preliminary weed outs and send you only a select few you can choose from. Most of them also provide some sort of guarantee. That is if the candidate is let go within a time frame, they would give you a replacement. Many recruitment agencies specialize in the type of candidates they provide. You can search on the net to find out which recruitment agencies have job posting similar to the ones you have available.

Your objective would be find a candidate that matches the ideal candidate profile you have made within the budget and within the time frame.

If you want to do the recruiting yourself, you have the following options and similar more.

  1. Past co-workers - This is a great way to find people whom you already have an experience working with. They can also recommend other people to you
  2. Relatives and friends - Another no cost way to find people.
  3. Networking. Linked-in, professional meet ups is great place to find employees. Even if you don’t use their paid service, hookup with the type of people you are looking for. And send messages and inquire if they are available or if they can recommend someone.
  4. Startuply and other similar websites geared towards start-ups. People who are job seeking here are looking to work in a start-up so they would be more flexible.
  5. Ads in post office and Craigslist Ads on local paper - this is relatively cheap. Downside is you would be recruiting within a narrow pool
  6. Ads on state employment boards - Most states have job boards that are usually low cost to free for employers. You can target a wider pool
  7. Ads on monster, indeed, careerbuilder etc - You can target a wider pool. Some of them are paid, some of them are free.

Its very important to have your minimum job requirements firmly determined and a system for evaluating them determined. Depending on where you advertise, you can get a lot of applicants and it may take time to go through them. There is an upside and a downsite to casting a wide net. Upside you get access to a wider pool of candidates. Downside is that some may not be available locally and may want relocation assistance. That would depend on your startup budget.

Additions:

I would also add

  1. Referral from existing employees. You can also offer them an incentive

  2. Job fairs

Specialist recruiters like 100k+ jobs, for designers, or for software developers only, specialist head hunters or and even straight forward poaching from competitors have been around for awhile. Essentially the communication part of recruiting can be thought of as advertising so any new method of advertising can be harnessed for recruiting as well. Eg.

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