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There is a bitter pill to swallow. Those looking to hire good Web developers had better go get a large glass of water. There simply aren’t enough good Web developers to go around and the demand is going up dramatically while the slightly increasing supply will not be able to keep up. Everybody else on the planet has also just got their new Web project approved and is looking to hire a team of developers. Unless you have a creative plan for finding and attracting the people that you need, you’re going to have a tough time competing with everyone else for the best Web people. The problem is there is a definite shortage of good Web people. And it’s going to get worse – I’m talking about a big shortage. The corporate world finally "gets" the Web and has big plans to set up big Web teams or outsource big Web projects to interactive development companies – which are also involved in massive recruiting efforts. As part of my job doing business development consulting for Internet development companies, I get around to a bunch of different Web shops and visit companies to talk about their Web plans and projects. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struck by how many of these places have told me about Web recruitment plans for 10, 20, or even, and I kid you not, 50 Web developers. And these aren’t just empire building dreams. These outfits have the head count approved and associated budgets signed off and are looking right now to fin and hire these people. Where the Hell are they all going to come from? I’ve spent the last couple of weeks making a bunch of client calls in London and around the UK and, just for fun, I started keeping track of how many people these companies said they were trying to recruit. Here’s what the notes I took tell me:
I could go on like this for a page or so and this is just in England. I have also spoken to a bunch of companies that plan on outsourcing to Web development agencies or ad agencies for their Internet projects. Virtually all Web shops claim to be in intense hiring mode. Sure there’s a fair amount of churn – developers moving from shop to shop for a slightly better deal. But that doesn’t happen as often as you might think. My experience shows me most of these developers are young, love what they’re doing, like where they’re working and have little desire to move. Universities are finally beginning to crank out fresh-faced Web developers and new media code-pounders and many of the new graduates are quite good. Still, it’s much better to hire people with a few years experience. Real-world work experience is simply worth much more. But you already knew that. Another thing that strikes me weird is that so many companies think they are going to get people with years of experience – they don’t want more than a few of their recruits to be new to Web development. For some reason there are still a lot of people who think they will be able to hire one cool person who will have all the needed skills rolled into one young body. I see job descriptions that look like this:
So what should we do? Bum. We know there’s a shortage of good candidates. The best people are probably already working. There are brilliant people coming out of school and you can certainly use some of them but you need some solid, experienced people for the core of your team. What you need to do is figure out what techies and creatives want in a job – and then figure out how to reach them and convince them your jobs offer those things. The job description or ad you come up with has to make it sound like the jobs you are offering are cool and have the things nerds and ponytails want – and I’m not just talking about pizza and Pepsi. And then you need to figure out where to place your message so the right audience will see it. What Nerds and Creatives Want Web people are different animals from most employees. Although it is dangerous to lump all Web types into the same category, many of the things you need to consider when trying to hire nerds applies to creatives and other Web people as well. Most employees do their jobs because they need money to live and don’t really have a lot of real interest in their jobs. This is not true for most nerds and Web creatives. Nerds love what they’re doing! When nerds get home at night they often fire up their computers and work on the same type of things they were doing at work all day. Nerds set up networks at home and fiddle with servers and exotic, completely inappropriate operating systems like OS/2 and BEOS. Nerds really love this stuff and want a job where they get to work on cool Web projects and use the latest nerdy hardware and software goodies. Toys Web people want toys. Good computers, specialist software in the latest versions, interesting hardware are what Web developers want. Keep in mind that a cool project may also be considered a "toy". Getting to do something technically cool is what nerds want. Creatives need powerful Macs with tablets. They MUST have tablets. Cool Projects Anything having to do with year two thousand is not a cool project. It doesn’t have to be a game or include whizzy graphics to be a cool project. A really complicated object-oriented database design would be cool to most geeks. Corporate stuff turns off the creatives. At one shop where I worked, we had no trouble getting people to work all night on the Pulp or Spice Girls Web site, but the team working on the Hewlett-Packard extranet always went home at 5:30 precisely. I’ll admit it was a bit of a groaner though. The Chance to Do Things Right Nerds constantly complain that they are asked to do work too quickly and don’t get to do things thoroughly or properly. They bitch because they don’t have time to comment their code properly. I’m not convinced that all of them would do these things if they did have the time, but nerds do tend to be a bit perfectionist and anal-retentive and would like to think they will be allowed to finish things. Recognition Recognition is more for the creatives than for nerds. Creatives create beauty, appreciate good style, try to be beautiful themselves and would like to think those around them realise and appreciate all this. Nerds crave the recognition of other nerds and don’t care at all what anyone else thinks of their work. I’m not sure how to do it, but somehow during the recruitment process you have to get your candidates thinking their work will be appreciated by those that care and recognised by bosses and nerdish supervisors. No Suits Web developers want a good work environment and good job benefits. Be aware that they define these terms differently then do most people. A good work environment means a place where they feel comfortable, a place where they can develop their own work style and take off their shoes if they feel like it. They want to work their own crazy hours and wear wrinkled, stained, T-shirts without feeling out of place. They want to be able to work in absolute darkness or in operating theatre brightness as it suits them. They don’t want to have to interface with any suits more than occasionally. Good job benefits don’t necessarily mean health care and a dental plan. It may mean being able to bring your dog to work with you and free cokes. Good Pay Of course Web people want good pay. Never forget that nerds are often exceedingly analytical. They will take the details of the pay package you are offering and calculate, based on the projected rate of pay increase, how much they will be earning in 7.5 years from now. They are often quite financially astute. BUT THEY WILL SACRIFICE PAY FOR A GOOD PROJECT. Most nerds will turn down good money for a technically exciting project. Another thing they want is (very quietly now) stock, shares, a piece of the pie. Web people can’t help but read about the millions their brethren are earning from stock options in Silicon Valley. Although this article is not the place for such a discussion, it is well known that stock is a great motivator. Everybody wants it. Keep in mind that few young people really have a grasp of what all this stock option stuff means and how things like vesting work. It’s sad but I’ve seen mere talk of stock options motivate people even though the options were unlikely to ever be delivered much less exercised. Promise options or equity if you can. This may be the thing that makes someone decide to come to work with your team rather than somewhere else and I don’t blame them. Team Nerds are shy and find it a bit intimidating to meet people and make new friends. Don’t get me wrong – nerds have friends and want more – they are just a bit slow about making it happen. So being a part of a "team" implies fun, friends, and social activities after work. Although basically loners, nerds like the idea of being on a team and all the fun things that implies. Play up the team aspects of your jobs. Creatives also like the idea of teams but often tend to be loners when working. Advancement Web developers mostly want to advance and become "Project" or "Team" Leaders and Managers like any other type of employee. Also like other types of employees, they may well not be happy once they actually experience project management but you certainly have to offer the possibility of leading teams and advancing within the company. High-falutin’ Titles Although on one, logical-thinking level most people realise titles aren’t all that important, they are much more important to Web developers than most simply because the industry is fairly new and there are not strict hierarchies of titles and job descriptions. So terms like "Junior" Programmer and "Senior" Programmer become important. The words "Manager" and "Director" are worth more than several thousand pounds in annual salary and bonus. I know of one Web shop that gives almost everyone the title "Webmaster". I suppose that is satisfying on some level for them. I would try to be flexible with titles and use them as management tools. So let’s try to redo that ad into something the nerds will want to find out more about:
How to Reach Nerds So we think we know what they want. Our new ad should communicate the idea that we have jobs that are nerd heaven. Now we have to get our message in front of our audience. What is our audience? Since we want experienced nerds, we need to get our message in front of experienced nerds. And these nerds are probably not looking for a job. They probably like the job they already have and are not looking through the job listings in the Sunday paper or surfing the job sites on the Web. Nerd Publications Nerds love to read and they read specialist nerd publications. Unfortunately, many of the publications they are likely to read are a bit pricey for advertising. Dr Dobbs Journal, C++ Developers Journal, Communications Week, and many others have their particular area of specialised expertise and are read by particular flavours of nerd. To reach the flavour of nerd you are trying to hire, talk to a similar nerd and find out what they read. Don’t let your ad be buried with a whole bunch of classified job ads in the back. The best candidates are not necessarily reading the job ads. Try to get your ad where the ones who already have jobs will see it. Job Web Sites Techies like to get their data from the Internet and Web job sites are perfect ways to get to them. But again, you are only going to reach the ones actively looking for work. Definitely use the job Web sites, but to reach the nerds who are happily employed and don’t realise they would be better off working for you, you’ll have to get to them in other ways. Try advertising on techy mailing lists and mentioning job openings after hanging around nerd newsgroups. Newsgroups can be quite effective since heavy-duty nerds use them for educational, social, and work information. Mention of a cool nerd job in a newsgroup will get attention if the subject line is well written. Most newsgroup visitors are only going to see the subject line so it needs to be short and attention getting. "Cool Nerd Jobs", "Advanced Technical Opportunity", "Only the Best Internet Architects Needed". Try appealing to their techy vanity and curiosity to get them to read your message. It is good to use words like "nerd, anorak, geek, prop-head." Nerds are proud to be nerds and don’t think these are bad words. These words are funny and rarely used in main-stream publications so their curiosity will be aroused. Nerds usually have a great sense of humour and are willing to laugh at their own nerdish tendencies. Newsgroups and Mailing Lists Newsgroups and mailing lists are prime hunting ground for nerds. Nerds still hang out in newsgroups. If you’re careful you can post a brief message stating your needs in newsgroups of a subject likely to attract the type of skills you need. Creatives and other Web heads don’t visit newsgroups nearly as much as the techies do but you can still reach them there. Once again, use some imagination in picking newsgroups on subjects dear to the hearts of the Web people you need to hire. You must be very careful posting messages about jobs on mailing lists. Although you would think people would be happy to hear about jobs in their field, people can get quite touchy about their mailing lists. Use discretion. School Web Sites The candidates right out of school (or still there) are going to be relatively easy to get your message to. Many universities have Web sites where you can post jobs. College nerds have high-speed Net connections and (if they’re looking for this kind of work anyway) are likely to be surfing the job sites. There are school job placement offices that can help get the word out. I don’t know of any good way to reach a whole bunch of schools with little effort – you may need to simply spend the time checking out university Web sites and figuring out where to post your job message. If you are really clever, you can determine who the profs are who are teaching new media and computer science courses and contact them directly. They may tell you about a few of their favourite, soon-to-be graduates. Recruiters Working with recruiters and head-hunters is a separate article all to itself. Most of them have no idea about the different types of techies and their different skills and will happily send an old-time Cobol programmer on an interview for a Java developer. Seen one programmer, seen them all. So they are likely to send you a bunch of completely inappropriate CVs to look at. No big deal. My approach for working with recruiters is spend time with the ones you know are good and tolerate the others as long as they keep sending good candidates to you. Personally I don’t mind plodding through piles of CVs looking for the gold. Since even most technical recruiters can’t tell much difference between techies, be prepared to sift through piles of CVs when working with them. Other Web Heads One of the best ways to find Web employees is ask working Web heads if they have friends or school acquaintances who might be good for the job. Talk to all the people you know who are involved in the Web and let them know you’re looking. This is good old-fashioned business networking and it works well. So the deal is you have to craft your message carefully and put it in a place where the kind of people you want to hire will see it. Your message should say the things Web developers want to hear and you have to be creative in order to get the message in front of the right people. After that you have a whole new problem – how to select the best applicants from a big pile of CVs. Good luck.
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You’ve finally got the approval for the big, cool Web project you’ve been pushing for over the last year, and now all you need is to hire some great Web developers who can write HTML and Java and get the site up and keep it running. Your management has finally realised the Web is vital to their future business prospects and have turned you loose. You’re ready to go. All you need now are some people who can write HTML and Java, right? And, since your project is particularly cool and important, you want the best ones. How do you find and hire these people?
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