We’ve noticed a pattern of mistakes being made by founders, internal recruiters, and early employees at technology companies. Here are the five most common.
When recruiting for a new position, many start by reaching out to their networks. But after that well has dried up, you might start to explore posting a job on LinkedIn, Indeed, Craigslist, CareerBuilder, or Monster. Everyone else is doing it, so it has to work, right? Not exactly.
While job boards may yield a high amount of applications, most of the candidates that apply aren’t actually qualified for the job. As an experiment earlier this year, we simultaneously bought job posts on Stack Overflow (list price of $495 for 30 days, plus an optional $50 to “highlight” the post), Authentic Jobs ($299 for 60 days), and We Work Remotely ($200 for 30 days, plus an optional $50 to “highlight” the post). We received 93 applications in the first week. Looking at that number, you might think, well that’s great! Nearly 100 applications to go through – you’re guaranteed to find the right person in there! But of the 93 applicants, only 4 met the very broad criteria (must live in the U.S., must have coded Ruby before, etc.) that we listed in the posts themselves. That’s just about 4%. We had spent ~$1000 to find 4 candidates that we couldn’t even guarantee would pass a phone screen.
