Yesterday I hired two new php programmers for Infobase. They are both incredible guys and are both currently working on their Masters in Information Technology at BYU. The interesting thing is how I met these guys and ended up hiring them. Neither one knew I was looking to hire or responded to any kind of an ad. The first one, Jonathan Balinski, I met the other day at the eBusiness day at BYU. He sat down by me (had no idea who I was) and we started chatting (we were listening to my Paul Allen, my boss, speak) he asked me what I did and I told him I worked for Paul, and he said he thought that was cool and that he had always wanted to be able to work for him someday. I told him to send me an email. That afternoon, he came in and we talked for a while and I decided to hire him. I talked to Paul about it and we made it official yesterday. The other guy, Jimmy Zimmerman, read one of my blog posts and commented on it. I sent him an email saying we should meet for lunch sometime. Then I read his blog and homepage and saw his portfolio and realized he was a php programmer. We arranged to meet yesterday and I interviewed him and offered him a job.
The amazing thing is that I ended up with 2 GREAT programmers without advertising. I know from experience that if I had advertised the positions, I would have had to wade through countless resumes and interviews in order to figure out who was good enough. I much prefer this method of building networks and hiring through them – in this case it just happened REALLY fast!
The lessons to be learned here? 1) Network always. Be friendly and open, meet as many people as you can. Don’t be afraid to express an excitement about working for someone. I would much rather hire someone that’s dying to work for us than someone who has never heard of us. Both Jon and Jim told me (before we discussed interviews) that they thought it would be awesome to work for Paul. 2) Make sure you have portfolios and other examples of your work easily available. I know a lot of people that you really have to dig to find out what they do and how good they are at it. Post your career history, examples of your work, etc so people can find it. 3) Both these guys (and me) were extremely excited about a chance to work with Paul. Paul is a very open, likeable and down to earth guy. He networks like know one I know. His energy is catching and being around him is exciting. People who get exposed to him are excited to work for him and that makes it easy for us to hire top notch people.
