At the beginning of november I was visiting Highload conference. I had learned a lot of technical trends, best practises by listening to the experienced speakers. However I was attracted to the lecture of Alexandr Ziza with loud title - “How to hire a developer for 10 days”. It covers the issue of developer’s growth and opens some not standard instruments for attracting developers to a company. Does you company use it?

Growth graph

Alexandr showed graph of a typical career:

When an employee comes to a new company, he or she has some start level, which usually immediately starts to grow. It happens because the company is new for the employee, he or she faces with new technologies and approaches. I can fully confirm his words, first months in a company is the most productive. Then, often some people stop growing and stagnation starts. I think everybody knows some man, who knows everything about his project, but he doesn’t develop yourself any more. Some of them become disappointed and his or her productivity decreases. Alexandr says, that it is the most appropriate time to give new tasks to a developer. In other case he or she will leave company or became less productive.

The most attractive specialists for companies are people, who are finishing next growing stage, but haven’t got bored yet. These people are professional, active, easy-going, they will do their work most effectively. But how to attract such people?

What to do?

Alexandr told that without any HR policy about 80% income CV are from not appropriate people. A few advice from Alexandr to get good specialists (only the most interesting and not obvious):

• Organize some paid training. Not free - is very important. Specialists, who pay money for education are active people who always growing.
• Organize a lot of events in your office. It also attracts people to your company.
• New people make a reputation of your company. They should be placed in the best areas of your office. These people will be asked questions like “Are you satisfied with your new company?”. Likely they will share in the Instagram photos of your office and their workplaces.

And the last interesting idea Alexandr noticed: In common it is not bad if your company often changes developers, but this process must be under control. A group must squeeze not appropriate people and hold good specialists. For example, the average developer work duration in google is 13 months.

Personally I don’t have enough experience to agree of disagree with Alexandr, but the ideas seem to be interesting and truth. That’s why I shared it here.