[pedrocarvalho]

My employee #1 was not the first or the second person I hired. I tried and failed a lot in finding the right person. I even made the biggest mistake of all of using a recruiter. What eventually worked for my company was someone straight out of college, with no previous experience, but that is smart and has the right small company culture.

This whole process was hard, but I learned a lot.I now have developers solve a small problem by writing code in a technology/language they don't master. If they know python, I give them a laptop with Visual Studio and tell them to solve the problem using .NET and C#, if they know Java and come from enterprise consulting, I give them a terminal window and python, if windows then linux, and so on. This gets them off their comfort zone and I can look for what I'm really looking: problem solving skills and being able to learn and pick up new things fast.

Another important thing is to be completely open about where your company stands: does it have money in the bank, does it have paying and happy customers, etc. I found that this scares away a lot of candidates, especially the ones coming from big companies, wanting to change their lives by working in a small company.

[jroseattle]

I'm rather surprised your interview process for developers works well for you. I can potentially see some benefit, but I look for fundamental skills outside the scope of some language.

[pedrocarvalho]

It's not focused on programming languages or a particular technology, but on placing them outside their comfort zone (taking their hammer of their hands) and try to see how they react to it. See my reply to pbsd, that's what I'm trying to look for.

[pbsd]

It's not just important that they pick up things fast. If you ask to do some task in Python, that would be done much faster in (say) C#, they should be able to point this out, instead of just following the recipe you gave them. Good judgment is important.

[blacksmythe]

That is a hard judgment to make, unless you know both Python and C#. Any of the candidates are going to be able to do the task far quicker in the technology they already know.

[pedrocarvalho]

Yes, agreed. What I'm trying to see is how they behave with something they're not used to, how they take on the problem. These are some of the things I try to analyze:

Do they search and read about the problem? Are they able to implement what they just researched? Are they looking for recipes and trying to copy and paste the code from some website? Do they have critical thinking (what you mentioned) and propose better solutions with better tools? Do they communicate during the problem solving stage, or are quiet, closed and isolated? Do they ask questions? Or behave like asking questions is a sign of weakness?

[rhizome]

Keep in mind that a person who passes your test well will be more expensive.