I am considering providing hacker recruiting services specifically for startups (bootstrapped or in seed stage), but I am not sure if I should establish my channel strategy directly to startup founders, or through recruiting agencies/headhunters. So, my question is ... how do early stage startups recruit hackers? Do they only rely on people they know? Do they hire headhunters or recruiting agencies? Do investors have a say on how/where you should hire the dev team?
Having been recruited, and been forced to hire through a recruiter, I can honestly tell you that both employers and employees want to find a way around them. These are the guys that hang out in the most trafficked areas (certainly monster.com) and just try and pick off either the employee or the employer early so as to distort the market and increase barriers and inefficiencies. If the market is weak, then create something like behance.net or dribbble.com or github (and never throw in an extra 'b') where people can meet each other. Brokers distort Markets.
> I am considering providing hacker recruiting services specifically for startups<p>Okay.<p>> So, my question is ... how do early stage startups recruit hackers?<p>Shouldn't you know that?<p>Seriously - if you don't know how people do it now, what makes this a good biz for you to get into?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned here yet are technology specific job sites. I.e. if you're looking for a Python hacker, hit the Python Job board (<a href="http://www.python.org/community/jobs/" rel="nofollow">http://www.python.org/community/jobs/</a>). I assume other technologies have similar things.
I'm still actively looking for cofounders. I go to tech events (Rails/Ruby user groups, etc), I went to the Cofounders Wanted meetup here in Austin. I put big banners on the product site advertising open positions. I put an ad on Craigslist looking for people.<p>I think the people who rely on their social network must either be friends with other hackers (I'm mostly not) or live in the bay area or something where there are lots of hackers. I mostly run in hippie/activist/academic circles and I'm not swarmed by people with tech/business chops so it's been a more difficult process for me. I would welcome a site or a service that would innovate around this problem.
I think the key here is to create a forum that connects the two pieces of the puzzle: engineers and business folk.<p>I've struggled finding a co-founder as well and have milked my network for everything I can squeeze out of it. I'm determined to find an engineering partner who I can really build many projects with for years.<p>If you're looking to build something, find a way for people to connect directly and strip away the antagonism/jaded-ness that usually shrouds business people & engineers from connecting effectively.
recruiters/headhuntes are never used. In fact all hackers avoid using headhunters/recruiters as its the first sign that the startup does not get it or know how to hire
Early stage things only go off of friends or people they know or met already. So forget about those services the founders already know what they want at that early stage. Maybe it would work for large established companies only.