Hiring Developers

Classified ads would be the cheapest route outside of Craigslist. Monster.com & Career builder tend to be expensive.

Now, don't take this the wrong way, but with the state of the economy, acquiring an overqualified member might not be so bad, albeit they probably would only stay around for the next couple years until the economy became greater.

(I assume it's not game related or you could have posted it on the Help Wanted Section or the Jobs section of GameDev. Ars Technica also allows you to post development jobs fairly cheaply).

Don't turn your nose up at the "over qualified". If they thought that the position you had available was beneath them, they wouldn't be applying for it in the first place.

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Original post by Wavarian Don't turn your nose up at the "over qualified". If they thought that the position you had available was beneath them, they wouldn't be applying for it in the first place.

I think the problem is more that these people expect to be paid in accordance to their experience and qualifications, even if the latter are not actually required for the job.

Even still, they might have recently lost their job and are willing to take a pay cut. More experienced candidates shouldn't be dismissed so easily.

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Original post by tstrimp I'm in a position where I need to hire two or three telecommuting developers. However the area I live in is generating practically no hits from the job site. The last post I put up had five responses, three were offshore indian contracting firms and the rest were either grossly under qualified (and asking WAY more then they were worth), or over qualified (Masters + 10 years of experience). Now obviously there are thousands of qualified applicants across the USA, but I have no idea how to tap that market. Posting an ad on Monster that shows up across the country is prohibitively expensive. I'll probably try posting some craigslist ads in more populated cities next, but I wonder if anyone here has any suggestions.

I run a small software company based around working remotely with clients. If you like I'd be happy to discuss quoting you, unless you're looking for full-time employees?

My site is down, but here's my business card [wink]



Apologies for jumping in if you're not interested. I would also recommend you consider trying jobs.joelonsoftware.com as a cheapish way to reach talented guys around the world.

[Edited by - JDXSolutions Ltd on August 4, 2009 1:58:14 PM]

Craigslist will get you tons of hits but you'll have to sort through the malarky.

I know thedailywtf.com has a job board. Not sure of the price but I'm sure the talent pool is higher than average just because of the nature of the content.

edit: nevermind, the job board closed down.

It is not games related, which is why I didn't post under jobs and left the details out.

I was more interested in bringing someone on full time as an employee, but that doesn't look like it's going to work out very quickly, so I'll most likely need to engage a contractor to cover the gap.

I'll try http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com and see if that generates any better responses.

Thanks!

I think there's quite a few of us lurking here who aren't only/at all in the games sector, but are drawn to GD simply as a programming community!

I've never used Joel's job board, but I'd hazard a guess it will raise the bar quite a lot on who you get applying. I'm sure you'll still get a load of jokers because the site's probably well-known enough to attract people who don't read Joel's blog and just want a job, but you can easily weed them out.

Good luck!

There seem to be a lot of enterprise developers that post here that just do games as a hobby. If the mods don't care it couldn't hurt to post up some details of the job here. If the job is full pay I for one would rather do the telecommunting then going in an office.

You could always try posting the job here.
Posting on a regular job site may be more traditional, but if it's a telecommuting job, then tradition is already out the window anyway.
I've run into a large number of experienced developers. If it's a .NET position, I'd be interested to hear more.

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Original post by Phytoplankton You could always try posting the job here.

Is that against some forum policy? Even if it is, I imagine you can get away with it, since we all know you around here.

Seems the threadstarter has already attracted a bit of attention from programmers.






Will the job details be posted? Anxiety mounts....
(On a more serious note, I'd guess most of coders here would be satisfied in fields unrelated to game development, so perhaps you could slap together a quick blog post and email account to post here for those who are interested in the job. Or this thread might suffice, if the moderators don't mind.)

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Original post by BeanDog Quote: Original post by Phytoplankton You could always try posting the job here. Is that against some forum policy? Even if it is, I imagine you can get away with it, since we all know you around here.

Well, I think technically proper jobs have to be posted through GameDev's job section, since GD get revenue through that. However, the line between Help Wanted and Jobs is not entirely clear; that would be the forum to post anything official in.

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Original post by Wavarian Even still, they might have recently lost their job and are willing to take a pay cut. More experienced candidates shouldn't be dismissed so easily.

More on this.

There are many other reasons why they may want a lesser job. Maybe they decided they don't like senior level work, and prefer a mid-level job where they can still tinker or goof off. Maybe they simply decided they want a break from the stresses of being a higher-up.

While it is likely they didn't realize it was a lower grade job than they expected, you do not know if perhaps it was intentional.

If they look like they may be a good fit but you cannot afford to pay them a senior level pay, tell them clearly and up front when you contact them: "We were advertising for a junior-level (or mid-level) position. Your work history appears to exceed what we were looking for. If you really are looking to work for us at the junior-level (or mid-level) pay grade, we would love to schedule an interview."


This simple statement allows them a graceful exit ("I didn't notice the constraints") and also allows them a way in if they wanted it ("I have more experience than you asked for, and I can explain...").

Don't discount them entirely. While it is most likely they were just spamming you with an application, there is a chance they weren't. There is still a chance you may end up with a bargain-priced skilled employee.

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Original post by JDXSolutions Ltd Well, I think technically proper jobs have to be posted through GameDev's job section, since GD get revenue through that. However, the line between Help Wanted and Jobs is not entirely clear; that would be the forum to post anything official in.

Exactly. This is why I haven't posted the details, GDNet has the jobs section for a reason, I just wasn't sure if I should put it there since it isn't games related. The help wanted forum is for individuals wanting to work together, not companies looking for employees from what I understand.

I'm going to email jobs@gamedev.net to see if I should place an ad here even though we're not a game company, or whether I can post a link to an offsite ad in this thread. I'll post an update once I get an answer.

Just for reference, I posted a help wanted ad looking for freelancers/contractors on a non-game project, a while back. Nobody seemed to mind.

Got the ok from Melissa, so here are the details.

We are mainly .NET development at this point. We're just finishing up the last conversion from a php xmlrpc webservice to a .NET WCF web service. We're using all the latest .NET tools (3.5sp1, ASP.NET MVC, WCF, WPF) and it would be a great place to work if you want to work with the latest and greatest from Microsoft.

We have a number of products that we need development help with. We have a PC (.NET 2.0 currently, may upgrade to utilize WPF) and Mac client (PyQT) that communicates with our hardware health monitoring devices and then uploads that information via web service to our servers for tracking health information over time.

We have a Kiosk (.NET 3.5) that goes in malls, health centers etc. It's in transition between winforms and WPF at the moment. It also uploads information via the web service.

We have the website (ASP.NET MVC, Very ajaxy) which pulls the information from our web service and provides reporting the readings taken from the devices and the kiosk.

Lastly we have the web service (.NET 3.5 WCF) which is used by all of the other services.

The web service and database portion are fairly well developed at this point, so most of the development moving forward would be on the kiosks and clients that interface with our hardware. The website also needs considerable work yet, especially on the admin side of things.

As far as the development environment and processes go, we're not where I'd like to be yet. I'm trying (in my spare time) to put together a continuous integration server to get daily releases built, and while we have some unit tests in place, we definitely don't have the coverage I'd like to see. These are things I'm working on and would like to have people on board who understand the importance of these sorts of things so I'm not having to fight with developers about the processes involved.

If you're interested, I'd prefer you send an email to jobs@stayhealthy.com instead of my account here so I can keep everything separated. Resume, code examples, salary requirements... you know the drill.

^Nice post.

A question that might be thrown at you is "What sort of work do you project to be needed after the conversions are complete?" The website might be a bit of an ongoing development project, but, for the most part, it kinda sounds like a good bit of the work listed could be done within six months. (I could be terribly wrong.) Basically, some might be curious about what duties you envision any new team members to have in the long-run.