illustration by Adrien Griveau

Programmers: here are some tips to be hired by a great tech startup eFounders Follow Apr 2, 2015 · 6 min read

There are countless blog posts by recruiters who give advice to startups on how to recruit the best developers. But if we want an actual match, developers also need advice on how to find their dream job (and stay there)!

Editor’s note: If you are a developer with a strong entrepreneurial mindset, we have your dream job: technical co-founder of a great startup. Check it out.

Introductory word

Willem Wijnans, blogger at The Sourcing Monk

The good thing about the current state of tech recruitment (which is very shitty), is that there are always people not accepting the status quo and trying to change things for the better — in this case, the shitty tech recruitment scene.

Some learn to code in order to understand the developers they recruit, the others sit on every scrum meeting there is to fully grasp what the team he/she is helping is looking for, and some others perfect their reach-out to an extent that you just can’t go around, as a top developer.

This is happening, but this is just a drop in the ocean. The majority of the tech recruitment vertical is full with spam, ignorance, and filth. But rest assured, the ones working and hiring for the hottest startups search for you; so, as a young dude/dudette studying CS, you can up your chances significantly landing a job at a dream startup:

Start blogging , start sharing your beliefs and ideas on certain technologies, but also on your view on life, your ideals.

, start sharing your beliefs and ideas on certain technologies, but also on your view on life, your ideals. Start committing , start your Github account as early a possible, open source all your projects and assignments.

, start your Github account as early a possible, open source all your projects and assignments. Start helping others, there are so many Q&A sites regarding tech (StackOverflow) or normal life (quora) where you can contribute on. This gives recruiters a perfect insight on your ability to formulate questions & answer questions and on your character.

Without one of the abovementioned variables missing from your profile, I, as a recruiter, am not even going to reach out. Start with these as early as possible and you’ll land your startup dream job in no time.

Last advice: avoid recruiters. If I were to be a developer and wanted to work at my dream company: I would find a repository, start pulling and joining a repo-chat on for instance http://gitter.im and chat with the repositories owner directly to woo him about my ability and interest. No recruiters involved.

Disclaimer: my approach is in no way a silver bullet and I do not claim that it is. I know I am missing out on many good devs/engineers who don’t have online presences. But whatever you do, be genuine!

The importance of side projects

Vianney Lecroart, Hacker in residence at eFounders startup studio

My first and by far the best advice I can give you is: show your motivation about what you love by doing things (even better if it’s related to the industry you are looking for).

I’ve never had to write a resume to be hired.

When I joined my first startup (a small independent video game company) in 1999 — yes, last millennium — it just took one interview.

I didn’t expect my school to teach me how to program and I spend tons of evenings and weekends coding all sort of things — just because I loved it. During high school and university, I wrote some perceptron, real-time 3d engines (with software rasterizers at the time) on Atari, Amiga & PC, chat clients, organized some coding parties, and so on…

For the game company, my profile was a perfect fit, I knew about real time and 3d engine thanks to my side-projects and knew about networking thanks to my studies. For an online video game company, it’s hard to ask for more. So when we discussed, it was more about what to do and how much I’ll be paid than selling me on why I should be hired by the company.

If you are not inspired, here are some example: