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Posted by: Jack - 23 April 2009 / 14:06
About three weeks ago we began looking for a web developer to hire for the summer. It was a hell of a lot harder than we imagined. I’m going to share some info on our approach and some counterintuitive data about where the best applicants came from.
Our approach
We advertised the job in five different ways. I’m ordering them by how useful we thought they would be (best to worst):
- Emailing the Computer Science department at numerous east coast schools and asking them them to let their students know about the position
- Email the Career Services department at the same schools
- Joining several technology/startup groups in Philadelphia (where we’ll be this summer) and reaching out to everyone on their mailing list
- Posting on online job sites like Startuply and Snaptalent
- Craiglist
The Data We received 203 applicants. Of these, we categorized seven as “Highly promising” and seventeen as “Somewhat promising.” We weren’t interested in the remaining 179.
Where did the promising applicants come from? Of the seven highly promising applicants:
- Four came from Craigslist
- Two came from Career Services department ads
- One came form a Philadelphia hacker group
And of the seventeen somewaht promising applicants:
- Eight came from Craigslist
- Four came from online job boards like Startuply
- Four came from Career Services department ads
- One (only one!) came from a Computer Science departemnt ad
We were shocked by the poor quality of applicants we got from CS departments. Most of our applicants came through this venue, but 99% of them (all but one) were not qualified. The majority were Masters students who had limited web development expereience. We emphasized in our ads and mailings that we were looking for a PHP pro, yet we received over fifty applications from Masters students who didn’t even mention PHP on their resume.
Craigslist was the suprise winner here. We thought that since that Craigslist was a nondiscriminating venue (anyone, however unqualified, could see our ad and apply) we’d get a lot of poor applicants, but it actually turned out to be our best source. For anyone looking to fill a tech job and wondering if the $25 Craigslist fee is worth it: Do it.
Recession Makes for Harder Hiring
My theory: the recession causes a vast increase in the number of people on the job market but only a small increase in the number of quality people looking for a job. In a recession, high-quality people tend to keep their jobs and low-quality people tend to get laid off. So the job market is flooded with crappy applicants.
For someone hiring, that means you’ll get twice as many resumes but no more quality resumes than you would receive in happier economic times.