How RedGate hired 10 geeks in five weeks

http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2010/08/how-redgate-hired-10-geeks-in-five-weeks.html

by bensummers • 16 years ago

47 51 16 years ago

blog.businessofsoftware.org

goatforce52• 16 years ago

Summary of the flash movie: The flyered Cambridge, gave away 600 ice creams from an ice cream truck, drove some trucks around town with banners and advertised in newspapers and on Spotify telling people they'd get a free iPad if they submitted a resume and were invited in for an interview. They gave away a lot (how many?) of iPads and they got their 10 geeks in less than 5 weeks.

What's missing: they don't say how much they spent on the advertising and freebies.

unwind• 16 years ago

I think a follow-up after 3-6 months with more details how satisified they are with their new hires would also help in evaluating their campaign.

Of course finding, interviewing and accepting the people are all important steps, but I guess you can't say it's been successful until you've had time to see how they worked out in your organization.

Let's hope for a follow-up later!

SanjayU• 16 years ago

Plus the man-hours they spent doing the actual resume filtering and presumably at least a couple of rounds of interviewing. Interviewing is time consuming stuff.

watmough• 16 years ago

So are you suggesting that for their $70k, the recruiters would have actually succeeded in screening out the idiots?

From my 15 years in IT, I highly highly doubt it. There is the occasional decent recruiter, but most of them are like realtors, only interested in commission $$$, not entirely unreasonable in itself, but unlikely to be aligned with anyone else's interests.

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

It might be pricey, but so are recruiters. If this process cost $50k ($5k/hire) it is absolutely a win.

adamt• 16 years ago

Recruitment fees are often (in Cambridge, UK at least) more like to 20% rather than 10%.

To employ 10 software engineers, at say £36k average salary, would have ended up costing close to £70k through traditional recruitment agencies.

Silhouette• 16 years ago

For the benefit of those outside Cambridge, it's also worth knowing that Red Gate is the local rising star software business. I have now lost track of how many friends, former work colleagues and friends-of-friends have wound up working there, but it's a lot.

If I've heard about it from that many different sources, so have many other good people with relevant skills in the local area. You have to factor that word-of-mouth effect into any thinking about how successful any additional recruitment drives they've been running have been. If I hadn't gone freelance, I might have applied myself, but it wouldn't have been because of ice creams or iPads, it would have been because the company has a reputation for being a decent employer and hiring good people.

KevinBoyle• 16 years ago

This is absolutely the boat I was in. I was interested in working for Red Gate before they started this campaign, because I had heard it was a good place to work.

The reason I hadn't applied before was because I was 'reasonably' happy where I was working but this campaign raised Red-Gate's profile in my mind again at a time when I was considering job hunting and also gave me the extra incentive to apply.

It worked, I was hired and I can say that so far it has been a great place to work. Plug for my team, check out http://www.red-gate.com/products/SQL_Source_Control/

tome• 16 years ago

I've heard many, many good things about Red Gate, and know people who work there.

There's one reason I reject them immediately as a potential employer: they're a Windows-only shop.

utnick• 16 years ago

Any idea, what is their main moneymaker product?

gaius5• 16 years ago

I am getting a weird sense of deja vu...

http://waxy.org/random/arsdigita/

We bought a Ferrari to give away to any employee who recruited 10 friends. In reality the car only cost $2,000 per month, the person who won it only got to drive it for as long as he or she was employed, and the cost of a Ferrari is much lower than 10 headhunter commissions

carson• 16 years ago

I'm not sure what the point of this is. I can get 1000 resumes and 10 geeks in a week advertising on hotjobs but in the end it is the quality of the person that matters. I would rather see the result of this a year from now.

jreposa3• 16 years ago

We've had a hard time finding quality candidates. In my experience, the Craigslist job board seems to be dying out. Is hotjobs your first stop in the hiring process?

euroclydon5• 16 years ago

I think savvy developers will increasingly want to dispense with the commitment that being hired entails. If there are so many companies in such dire need of talent, why can't talented developers become highly skilled migrant workers? I just think it's too difficult to keep a talented person satisfied, in one job, for years on end -- the ability to ramp-up and ramp-down without the overhead of a full-time employment relationship or sleazy middle-men, is the future of software employment, I hope.

pierrefar• 16 years ago

I know some people who got through and some who got rejected very early on. Regardless of volume, my very limited sample tells me they were very strict in choosing.

ctb• 16 years ago

Agree.

byoung2• 16 years ago

It would be cool to try somthing like Zappos, and offer them the free iPad only if they walk away right then and there, or turn down the iPad and stay for the interview.

Aegean• 16 years ago

I was expecting to see a mixergy-style talent story where they got 10 geeks with intuition and little spending. I don't see the intuition or talent here.

nickpinkston• 16 years ago

Likewise - I actually think they were very unimaginative. All of that stuff is expensive and obvious. I was thinking we'd see some scoured GitHub/SourceForge/etc. type of stuff or a programming competition, maybe even a super-poach of a good team.

Karma ++ to whoever put up a "hire geeks on the cheap" post.

profquail2• 16 years ago

It's really difficult (and really, really expensive) to recruit developers in Cambridge (even for Red Gate, which has a fantastic and very friendly company culture). We're talking upwards of £10-20k PER developer...so the innovation is finding and hiring 10 developers for a fraction of the normal cost (they interviewed hundreds of applicants and were still very picky about who they hired).

hunterjrj• 16 years ago

Are they that desperate for developers in the UK? If so, how does a Canadian get a work permit!?

ig13• 16 years ago

It's pretty easy, apply for a tier-1 visa which is a points based system (the main factors they take into account are education level, age, previous earnings and english language ability), if you get enough points and don't have a criminal record you can normally get a visa. Most software developers can easily qualify.

Once you have that visa you can work for any UK company (there's a minimum earning requirement but most software development roles pay comfortably more than that).

Although if you want to do it, sooner is better than later as the current government is thinking about sticking a quota on the number of Tier-1 visas that are issued in a year.

balac• 16 years ago

and they keep changing the requirements (now you have to have a masters degree), so better apply sooner rather than later.

gaius5• 16 years ago

Cambridge is a nice town, but their "desperation" will be that most developers in the UK will head straight for London.

ig13• 16 years ago

Shortage of good developers in London too though.

3pt14159• 16 years ago

What type of work/salary are you looking for hunterjrj? I know several companies in the Toronto area looking for devs.

helium• 16 years ago

Does anyone know if RedGate will sponsor a visa for foreign candidates?

ramchip• 16 years ago

Probably these guys: careers@red-gate.com

profquail2• 16 years ago

They normally don't, but if you're a smart, hard-working developer, then I'm sure they'd consider it (even if your programming expertise is in a field that doesn't match what they do).

jscore• 16 years ago

So another VC-backed company bribed a bunch of interviewees with free stuff.

adw• 16 years ago

RedGate are bootstrapped.

jacoblyles• 16 years ago

Is it okay if I love computer science and programming but don't like being called a geek? My activities and interests bridge several cultural divides. I don't like being simplified.

How RedGate hired 10 geeks in five weeks

Related Stories