[smwhreyebelong]

HN "Who's hiring", linkedin jobs, even craigslist.

My personal experience with recruiters has not been as good as I would have liked. The recruiters I dealt with mostly did keyword searches on technologies and experience (e.g C++ dev with 3 yrs of experience) ignoring the other skills (teamwork, passion, how excited the person is about the company, etc.) Most recruiters use means that the companies themselves could use(LinkedIn, job boards, etc.) If the founders of the startup are not willing to invest time to find the talent and rather pay hefty fees to the recruiters, not sure if I would want to work for that startup anyway.

The ideal company would be one that you just "come across" than go out looking. For example, a product you heard about somewhere that got you really excited, or an idea that you had and while searching for who is working in that space, you find a company that was doing something very similar.

[vrikhter]

I agree with you on the recruiters point, heck most searching through resumes today is keyword based. Wouldn't it make sense to have something similar to match.com for employers and employees?

[smwhreyebelong]

I agree that it's all keyword based. I think it's because machines can only capture the objective factors of a job search. Things like : "will you get along with the team", do you like the people you'd be working with, etc are very subjective and not easily captured by computers.

Meeting people at events, getting recommendations from other people you trust allow one to evaluate the position at a much more subjective level and make an estimation of the human-elements of working at the startup.