A lot of these sound like conventional wisdom (although "it should be reflected on your calendar" is smart), but the "Fifth Principle" --- "To be extraordinary at recruiting, it is crucial to be extra-ordinary at assessing candidates" --- is I think absolutely true, and not said often enough.
Sorry for this buzzkill comment, but this is one reason hanging out with startup founders can be intolerable in some cases.<p>Now I don't think focusing on recruiting or only going to events in which you are actively recruiting people is wrong, it isn't. You are more than entitled to do everything in your power to help your company succeed, and recruiting is obviously a major part of that. However, go too crazy with it and you start to get into the realm of people who knock on random doors and proselytize their religion.
I wish there was some lip-service to the actual interviewing process. The interviewing process seems to be the pain point in recruiting with the vast majority of startups I've been to.<p>Nothing telegraph's a company's poor management like a silly interview process. Make sure there's a purpose to each stage of your interview process, don't just throw your whole team, one by one, into a conference room with a candidate with no direction.
Summary: Article about how everyone in a company should be recruiting.<p>Recruited/recruiting for some notable companies. Current managers are heavily engaged in recruiting and I'm quite lucky . Working with some other companies, managers were MIA(missing in action) for long periods of time. Example, present candidates, don't hear back from managers for over a month x_X.<p>For extremely large corporations the recruitment function is increasingly being outsourced, in fact a candidate might not even know they're talking to an outsourced company. Here's my post on this:<p><a href="http://withdavidli.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-is-rpo-recruitment-process.html" rel="nofollow">http://withdavidli.blogspot.com/2014/05/what-is-rpo-recruitm...</a><p>Use of agencies, RPOs, and high amounts of contracted recruiters gives a company more flexibility with their budget, as headcounts can change dramatically in any given year.
Maybe companies wouldn't have much trouble recruiting engineers if they tried to lure us with, <i>gasp</i>, higher pay, and not just free drinks, video game nights, and vapid promises.<p>When companies stop treating devs as juveniles, or people who desire to work "on cool problems" without care for compensation (while those working in sales/business roles, and founders, sure care about making money), they'll have an easier time hiring.
Interviewing a candidate well is a separate skill set from knowing how to code well. Most companies who select the interviewers confuse the two types of skills.