For nearly 3 months, I have been taking the java developer recruiting beyond my working time, for my company. This is a definitely new, small company. The recruiting process is hard for me. I need to post the recruiting ad in some technical website, like java section of newsmth.org, csdn forum.

For each candidate, mostly I first phone call him to introduce my company, as a medium-scale finance-focus project-implementing company. Words like “we focus on the finance industry, for example, 80% business comes from bank and some from asset management company or security”, and “now we have more than 50 developers”, and explanation what is project-implementing and the quality of candidate we need.

If the candidate on the other side of phone shows his interest, I would take a technical interview directly on the phone. If luckily, he is qualified in technical, I would arrange a face-to-face interview with our managers. After the interview, that is salary bargain. I estimate 1 in 2 candidates would have interest in our opportunity and then 1 in 3 would be qualified and then 1 in 2 would be offered offer. After all, 1 in 2 may accept our offer. Totally, I only can find one from 20 candidates.

At first, I cannot find sufficient candidates, just by posting ad in those forums and waiting resumes in my mailbox. A month ago, a seller joined my company and suggested that we could buy the resumes from zhaopin.com (a talent hunting website). Then we bought 100 pieces. From that on, I didn’t need to post ad in the forums, but just searched the resumes in the zhaopin.com and then download the seeming qualified resume. Then telephone him to introduce my company, as like before.

To date, I have recruited 16 developers; some of them are quite experienced. All of they are deployed to our projects in CMBC. CMBC requires all project teams to work from Monday to Saturday, each day from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Terribly! This working time issue killed many of our candidates.

The salary we offered is not high, ranging from 3k to 9k. for some 4/5 years experienced developer, we offered up to 9k.

The recruiting process is tiresome and time consumption. Someday I need to take the phone interview after 9:00 PM at home. Imaging if you repeat the similar words, and listen the similar answer more than 200 times, how crazy will you be?

I really get tired. It is much harder than coding in the cubic.

Of coz, I learned quite a lot from this recruitment, like how to write the resume to attract the underline employers, how to arrange the process.

After all, I review this process, and find that I make a big mistake. Yes, I tried my best to find the good qualified candidates with quite a low price, and I really did it. But what it may take account to me? Some of them are experienced, but their salary is quite low. The boss can see it. The boss can compare their salary with mine. That is the problem. Now my salary is nearly 50% exceeded. My salary is distinct among the list. I don’t leave the space for myself to bargain my salary promotion in the future. I, set the block to myself.

Decade days ago, I talked the recruitment with teatime. She told me that I didn’t need to be so responsible, just find the high pricing candidates or just so-so candidates to the company. Those capitalists don’t take care how much energy I spend. She is right.

Sometimes we need to be selfish to protect our interest.

Initially I wanted to title this post as “learn to be selfish”, but it may be too prominent. So just title it “recruitment during 3 months”. Maybe no one would read this post all.