Where will I look for 3 technical staff

maxwell smart

Hi

I'm looking for 3 technicial staff members for a startup. They will be programmers, maybe recently finished their degree, and we will train them in Asterisk on a 3 month secondment in Europe, with onging training here in Ireland after that.

What job agency is best for this kind of thing? (bearing in mind that while I'm responsible for locating the potential staff, I'm not technically minded in this area so would prefer someone in an agency who is!)

Magenta

I suggest CPL, they are very good.

marian1987

Hi I work with a reputable recruitment agency mentioned above and i would be delighted to help you out?

onemorechance

Try the careers office at the universities or colleges.

axer

Try Hudson aswell.

Offy

maxwell smart wrote: »

Hi

I'm looking for 3 technicial staff members for a startup. They will be programmers, maybe recently finished their degree, and we will train them in Asterisk on a 3 month secondment in Europe, with onging training here in Ireland after that.

What job agency is best for this kind of thing? (bearing in mind that while I'm responsible for locating the potential staff, I'm not technically minded in this area so would prefer someone in an agency who is!)

The first thing you need to do is talk to programmers before you talk to an agency. Programmers programme, recruitment consultants generally do not programme. Whats your background? Sales, marketing? Management? Talk to someone than knows how to do what you want FIRST even if you cant hire that person. They will tell you exactly what you need and what type of programmer can do it.
Find out if you can get any people with experience in telecoms, like ex-Ericsson people for example. The AIT in Athlone trains programmers with Ericsson in mind as they have a software campus in Athlone. Perhaps its worth giving them a call?
As a start-up you can tie in with third levels and get research grants for 80% of the work that they do leaving you with only 20% to pay which could be benificial at your companies stage. All the work is overseen by lecturers and done by post grad students but they wont give you something that doesnt do what its meant to do. Be careful what you ask for, they will give you exactlly that with no more and no less. If you leave anything out the code wont do what you require of it. Just talk to programmers before you pay anyone.

Mrs OBumble

Some good advice from Offy there.

Don't rely on recruiters to do your technical screening for you: if they understood the tech stuff, they wouldn't be working in recruiting! I wonder if you can get some recruitment advice/consultancy off a similar style (but different specific area) technology company.

TBH, I'd be concerned if you're looking at doing a start-up with only inexperienced programmers: if you get folks who write super code, but don't document, plan, communicate with mgmt or customers, manage their codebase properly (boring admin stuff), test thoroughly, etc, then you'll have a big problem. Lots of grads will have experienced the theory of all this being important, but it takes actual work experience to learn the imporance of following the disciplines.

Can you possibly consider one experienced team-lead, and two grad-level folks? (And if you already have the TL, why aren't THEY doing the recruiting???)

amen

using a recruiter is prob the worse thing to do. They just want to earn their commission. If you are a startup then unless you are from a technical background how will you know what you are hiring? How will you ask the correct questions and know if the answers are correct?

The best thing is to contact your nearest college and talk to some lecturers and ask do they have any recommendations.

You will need a technical person on your term.

Programming as has been mentioned before is not just writing code its about well written and well mantained code that is easy to modify and extensible.
It should of course come with good documentation, test plans, automatic builds, source code repositories, backups etc.

You may also need an analyst to writes specs, perform test, talk to customers etc

maxwell smart

OP here.

I need to clarify things a bit. I do have a "team leader" who will lead the 3 new recruits. The reason I've taken this on is that his english is not perfect, so I have to be the point of contact. He will b the trainer and will be present at the interviews.

I'm quite interested in the idea of talking to colleges directly. Ideally, as there will be lots of training in company specific products, this would be best. I will look into this.

Thanks for the help

yop

Definately speak to the colleges, there is a program there also where once you establish a relationship with the college you can get students in on "free" placements, this will give you some testers/junior programmers for a period while also giving the students the much desired experience.

GajahMada

The best thing to do is to talk to techinical person first. If you do eventually need to use recuitment agent, you know what is their offering and if the correct person has been choosen for you. You need to be careful.

nogoodnamesleft

Best thing is to talk to some one technical 1st before you go off to recruitment companies in order to pull together your selection criteria.

What sort of enviroment is the Asterisk going to be used in (Office PBX, Network Operator)?
Previous experience a prerequisite? If so what?
Typical roles the engineers would be involved in? Is it hands on etc?
What sort of training is available?
Are ye using the opensource code or the licensed version of asterisk?
Hardware the software is going to run on?


Im also in Telco but im more on the Field Eng side usually log into asterisk to see if the trunk lines are up :P

BTW what we normally find is that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Do you want monkeys designing s/w that your PBX runs on?

amen

The reason I've taken this on is that his english is not perfect, so I have to be the point of contact.

and he is the team leader? I assume as you are looking for technical staff that this is a technical job? So if his english is not good how is he going to impart technical knowledge? How will he communicate with customers/clients?

there is a program there also where once you establish a relationship with the college you can get students in on "free" placements

At least when I was in college you were required to be paid for these placements and to do some real work. As for a startup I would not suggest you use some second/third year student. You want someone who knows what they are doing and will around to help your startup during the first few years.