So I put up a job ad here =>Prepclass is Loooking to Hire a Full Time PHP Dev. Earn N100k-N150K Monthly stating that we at Prepclass were looking to get a full time techie to handle our numerous tech needs. In all honesty, I was shocked that we did not get as many response. One can only ask these set of questions
Is it really hard to get a full time PHP dev guy to join a growing company or am I poor at searching?
What really motivates a developer ?(in order of importance)
(I)Swag of the company or founder? (Konga, Iroko etc)
(ii)Pay from the company? (I honestly thought N100k-N150K was good)
(iii)Prospects of the company going global and swallowing Africa?
(iv)Stock options available to early employees ?
I personally knew(and still know) a handful of developers while we were at the CCHUB but they are all so busy with personal projects -some build for 3-6 months and there is never any real pressure to launch or grow these personal projects into businesses.
The formula is
1)Start a localhost startup (look sexy) ===>
2)Stay at the hub and get support=====>
3)Have a freelance job that pays the actual bills(in some cases quite a lot of money I wonder why they dont just turn the freelancing gigs into a company )===>
4)Keep staying at the hub===>
5)End
Is there a way to convince this brilliant techies to join a growing comapany where there is diversity in skill set i.e marketing/strategy/executions meets tech. A company that is already making profits and willing to discuss stock options with 100-150k pay?
Please what is your best advice to build a committed tech team (lets even start with 1 person)
Hi @ogunlanaolumide. I don’t think the problem is from your pay structure or the reputation of your company.
I think it’s because of the limited number of experienced programmers available locally. For you to attract these top talents, you have to develop great head-hunting skills. For very specialised skills like PHP programming, you might need to do background research on your prospects and then approach them with an offer.
An experienced HR personnel or consultant could also be helpful in head hunting. Head hunting is a specialised skillset globally.
You should start by talking one on one to a few of these developers you knew at Co-creation Hub. The first developer is often the hardest because you have to personally headhunt them and make sure what you are doing is technically interesting to them. I thought a major lacking in that blog post was a sense of what the company does or what kind of technical challenges the person will be working and what impact the person will be making. These are the things that motivate - not just good people but good developers. I believe if you include this in a job description and distribute widely (think beyond radar) you will find the right person. Hiring is difficult but it job numero uno for a great founder.
PS: You should talk to PushCV.com and jobberman as well. Doesn’t help to look for employees among entrepreneurial folks like those who are more likely to be on radar.
I can get a freelance geek for 100k - 200k to do within a month, no need to wake up early or get stuck in traffic and I can work from anywhere, so why will I give up this convenience for [a meagre] 150k per month job? There’s nothing out of this world that the job offers that I can’t get working on my own.
To motivate people, you need to do more than what you’re offering, or how do you think that compares to the current market standard? You need to make people see that the environment they are coming into will benefit them and help them grow.
Also, from my experience, something quite important is to get a strong lead developer, who is obviously better than the average developer, once you can get such a developer interested in your project, getting other developers will be a lot easier. If I attend an interview and see that the person (or team) interviewing me is a lot better than I am, that in a way will get me interested, “all the while I thought I was so good, but I know joining this team will help me learn a lot more”.
a simple cover letter explaining your future plans for the next 2 years (minimum of 650 words)
The way you write your job description also matters, seriously, who has time for this ? You’re the one who needs the dude, most times all you need from developers is reference to their previous projects.
Referrals, most developers are fine where they are, so they’ll probably not go around looking for a 150k per month job. Referrals will also help you get people who can be trusted.
@logbon72 Interesting remarks here. Perhaps asking for a cover letter was wrong. Now I see that, however, it is quite important that we know the plans of whomever we work with. Please advice what I should do exactly ?
Asking for Cover Letter is not wrong, I’m just saying I think it’s irrelevant, I actually can’t remember ever reading any cover letter, I’m usually interested in what the person has done and what skills he/she claims to possess, when we see face-to-face, we can then discuss future plans, et al, but that will be when I’m at least clear this person will be a good fit. Your ad placed a lot of emphasis on the essay and I think that can be a turn off.
To answer this question, ask yourself these ones, “why would a committed PHP dev wan to work here?”. “If you were a PHP dev, would you take your own offer?” I work at Konga, been there for the Past 2.5 years which is the longest I’ve stayed in any one place, the money helped make it easy but the clincher was the pitch Sim gave me during the interview, I’ve never heard of Konga up until been called for the interview but to meet a man passionate about what I thought at the time to be an impossible mission who patiently outlined is plan for the company and his vision in the minutest detail and how he’d solve payment and logistics which I knew to be the bane of e-commerce, I was sold, after that I didn’t even think of not joining. From the above, you might come to the wrong conclusion that money is the only way to keep top talent, no. I’ve had more higher paying offers that I turned down because the vision was lacking in depth or the company was too arrogant to explain what it was on about or expected me to know. You have to sell your vision to your potential employees, if your vision is a pill the world needs then remuneration makes it easy to swallow.
I think I will just leave a comment here too. The company culture is very important. Who are the people working there? How do they value each other’s input. I have known you personally, but your attitude towards developers and product development might make it difficult to keep a talented developer who can execute on your company’s long vision.
Create that culture that is developers friendly. It’s beyond the money. At this stage, I don’t think you can compete with some of the big cops with money. For example, I know 2 Laravel developers who work for 2 startups abroad from Nigeria here.
Developers aren’t necessarily attracted to good pay. Put differently, if pay is all you offer, we’ll rather do freelance. Good developers are looking for where they can get better, so either you have/are a very good senior developer that they can learn from or you paint a picture of a huge, audacious project that they can see themselves getting a lot better by working on, like what @Jason_Igwe_Njoku did when he called for applications. So rather than find out what the guy’s plans are, tell us what your plan is. I know very good developers that are taking home half of what you are offering but are working in companies where they are improving significantly every week due to the challenges they are taking on and the developers they are working with. By their next job, they will be worth more than 5 times their current current pay. Getting better is what every good developer cares about!
In the same vein, avoid coming off as “doing us a favour” because you are paying the salary. Last year I reported a bug to this guy on his site, then he tried to offer me a job. Right off the bat, he started telling how he will change my life, how he will pay me well, that I should drop whatever I was working on and follow him like some kind of Jesus. [Even in the heat of my “brokeness”][1] I turned him down flat. I met him some months ago, he was still saying the same thing, my reply was the same.
He said “Find me a PHP developer, I don’t care what he’s working on. I just want to meet. Money is not the problem.”
I said: “Oya go and talk to Andela”.
He said: “Who is Andela”?
We haven’t talked again since then. Last I heard, all the people working with Him have quit.
Sad truth is that every Nigerian Programmer sees Zuck, Larry Page, or Elon Musk in himself… Hardly will you find one that is not too busy with the NEXT BIG THING… company swag as you said is a factor
The essay is a BIG issue though. Am I sure I want to sit down and write a novel applying for a job when my codes are scattered about. If you haven’t got someone, you might want to review how you intend shortlisting developers.
Not just for Startups, even our “big companies” need to be thought, funny, before this came up I was planning to do a rant on my interview experience with Google/Facebook vs. Konga & others, the difference is just too much. While the former makes you feel like you are doing them a favour, the latter will make you feel like they want to do you a huge favour.
Of course you have no shortage of developers in your startup, you are a senior developer with MSc in computer science from abroad!!!
You are most developers’ dream boss, especially here where coding education is largely informal (google+blogs+stack overflow).
Could you please forward some applications that you are not interested in? Or better still could you please send them an email about us(I could forward a template)
@logbon72 In all fairness if you re-read the job post you wont see any emphasis on the cover letter(I even used the word “simple”) Plus I asked for references to past projects before asking for cover letter.
In the past few months I have spoken to more than 300 teachers, some interesting, others were time wasters. I have found that the easiest way to sieve through and get good ones is to see what they plan for themselves in the nearest future. I thought I could draw the exact parallel for developers by asking for a cover letter and I actually consulted a developer whom I respect and he suggested this approach. Now I know better to pitch my case first
I hate the way developers are taking as code monkeys or just geeks when they should be respected as a key part to the company. but as for my comment on this question. i have nothing to say, because my startup has not gotten to this stage.
