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Lucky hunter

How we found a
Senior-level C ++ developer
for a startup.
Case

A step-by-step guide for founders
who are desperately searching for an IT hero to join the team,
but can't find them

If you work in the IT-sphere, you know firsthand how challenging it is to find a good tech specialist. Startup founders find it particularly tough: few founders can offer a tech pro a higher salary than large IT companies offer, and options - a best-loved bonus that startups provide, have long ceased to be an attractive condition since even the most promising project can't give a 100% guarantee of success to their employees.

What's more, it's difficult for many founders to determine a candidate's profile. Are vast background, depth of experience and knowledge of 2 or even 3 programming languages more important than on-the-fly learning and glowing eyes of a candidate? How to understand whether a specialist is suitable or not if work at a startup is unpredictable and includes a wide range of tasks?

It turns out that to convince an IT professional to leave a stable workplace and accept the final offer, requires a lot of effort.

Do think that we are suggesting putting up with failure and are convincing you of having no chance to hire tech talent? Well, that's not the case :) Recently, our team has found a Senior C ++ developer for a startup, the terms of working in which were far from being easy. Explaining how we've managed to deal with the task - in our short article.

Ekaterina Zhukova, Lucky Hunter IT-recruiter

The task and difficulties

The conditions laid down by the founder were as follows:

Remote work;

Work in European IoT startup with average market salary;

Lack of stability and ability to work on a tight schedule;

Solid experience in the tech field and on-the-fly learning of specialist.

Moreover, in addition to knowing C ++ at the Senior level, the candidate should have known Node.js. The simultaneous knowledge of C ++ and Node.js is a rather rare skillset, so we had to make a lot of effort to efficiently fill the role.

How we filled the vacancy

Each Lucky Hunter case is unique: depending on the conditions and specifics of the job opening, we determine the parameters on which we'll focus on during the selection process.

We were searching for a specialist ready to work for a startup, therefore, in our case, the leading success factor was solving the main difficulties of recruiting for a startup. They were: determining the accurate profile of a candidate and meticulous work on specialist motivation.

Step #1: Candidate's profile

To build a candidate's profile, we:

Organized several online negotiations with the client
Thanks to guiding questions from the Lucky Hunter team, the client got an idea of the future employee image
Processed more than 70 specialists' CVs and conducted 12 interviews
Customer's comments on the profile, as well as a deep understanding of the technology stack of the project, helped us to finally create the image of the perfect candidate.

Totally we processed 316 candidate applications, sent more than 270 emails and selected 34 candidates who were interviewed by our team. Among numerous specialists, we found a developer who completely ticked all the boxes.

Here's the statistics from the CRM-system:

After we'd interviewed the candidate, we were sure: this was the very candidate who would fit perfectly the team of our client.

However, everything turned out to be not so simple. We faced another difficulty in hiring for a startup: the candidate lacked the motivation to leave his stable work for the sake of a risky project.

Step#2: Motivation

We understood: to interest a candidate in the offer, we needed:

а) to convince the developer to have an interview with our the startup CEO;
б) to "emblaze" the eyes of the candidate during the interview.

Thanks to the high professionalism and the ability to determine the needs of the candidate accurately, the Lucky Hunter IT recruiter was able to convince the developer to have an interview with our client. The customer did an excellent job: the developer was inspired by the job and eventually accepted the job offer.

Keys to successful
recruitment for a startup

Partnership
Cooperating with the agency using the principle of partnership, you increase the effectiveness of your work several times. Mutual assistance, support, the ability to be receptive to each other, as well as flexibility in decision making contribute to the quick and effective job opening filling. Didn't believe us? Read the article.
The joint motivation of a Recruiter and a customer
The recipe is simple: a recruiter arouses a candidate's interest, talks about inspiring tasks and interesting work, and a customer charms and wins a candidate over to finally join their team.
Founder's enthusiasm for the project
If you are passionate about your project, honest with your candidate and ready to make concessions - you can interest even the most sceptical pros.
The Lucky Hunter expertise
In just a month, we found a Senior-level developer who perfectly codes in C ++ and knows Node.js. And all this is because our team understands the technology stack, knows the is well-versed in various tech professions, follows the tech trends, daily improving the skills in finding IT talents.

Contact the Lucky Hunter agency: we know the specifics of searching and selecting specialists for a startup, build trust-based relationships with the client, quickly motivate specialists to consider exactly your offer.