Top 3 tips for startups: how to find and keep the best developers
Startups building tech products have to work extra hard to overcome the intense competition for top developers. Not only are they faced with the very real challenge of keeping talented hands on deck, (products don’t build themselves!) but as an organisation they must outshine larger, more established companies to attract the best people.
There’s no doubt that lack of time, experience and funding all seem stacked against you when you’re running a startup. But being scrappier and more nimble has its benefits too. This post explains how startups can turn perceived blockers into advantages during the race to become an employer of choice.
How you go about hiring says a lot about your company culture. By being proactive, efficient and kind, you’ll engage budding engineers as your company scales, providing the right environment for them to grow with you.
1. Move fast.
Startups move quicker because they have to. They have fewer people, and fewer hours in the day, so they need to get things done faster and more efficiently. The best small companies get sh*t done and learn along the way, and take the same approach to hiring. Your ability to move fast is the best way to compete with larger companies.
Case study: Digital Nebula
Challenge: Devising an interview process to assess a large group of developers at once.
Solution: A mini hackathon run in-house that challenged a group of 30 developers to build a cooking app, in pairs.
Result: Hired 6 developers in one day.
Not every startup can coordinate running a hackathon in-house, but it’s an efficient way to review the abilities of a bunch of candidates all in one go.
And if you like Facebook’s old mantra: “move fast and break things” but want your developers to create beautiful clean code (and not “break things”) then try a craftathon instead.
2. Provide training and mentorship opportunities
Creating a culture of learning and development is crucial for attracting the right sort of talent. Offering a structured career plan will attract ambitious juniors who are hungry to learn. Startups can expect to scale the number of people by 12x between seed and growth rounds, and you’ll want your best people to know that they can grow with you.
Balancing your talent pipeline is the key to scaling well.
Too many senior team members early on can cloud judgement on some of the most important decisions you’ll make as an organisation. Having juniors on the team is a great way to create diversity and dilute a crowded opinion marketplace. Plus, they will be more affordable than only hiring senior devs.
You can provide focus for your leaders by encouraging them to practice mentoring, even before they are ready to to do so full-time.
3. Invest in quality
Balancing your team with juniors is essential, yes — but make sure they are the right kind of juniors. You want the first handful of people you hire to be able to take on leadership roles a year or so down the line.
These people may not have the right experience now, but you’ll be able to recognise traits that will prepare them for senior roles in the future.
“Someone who challenges openly, and can be a development leader, who can have [the right] discussions and take the lead on suggesting new technologies, etc. We look for passion, autonomy and self-starters” — Doctor Care Anywhere
When it comes to salaries, you must pay market-rate to secure the right people. There’s a good chance your candidates will have invested plenty of blood, sweat and tears into getting where they are — paying them what they’re worth will send the right signals that you are willing to invest in their development.
If you’re looking to meet talented, passionate developers who could make a difference at your startup, why not find out how we could help today.
