How to recruit the best people (that are friends with your coworkers)

It didn't work last time, so let's do it again

The best way to recruit people is by referral. Does somebody doing an OK job have a former coworker they liked to work with? From that place that went out of business? See if you can hire them as well. Clearly, those two are a winning combination.

Do not ask if they liked working with them or if they just did a good job. Building great software and being a good COD squad is basically the same thing. When the referral does come in, make sure to have the interview process be a rubberstamp one, where you figure that the person will work out and don’t look for faults. No need to ruffle any feathers: these two are friends, and friendship is how business is done. Also, no need to set expectations for how things work at your company - they can bring previous expectations with them, or their friend can set them if he remembers.

Keep this process going until you have a handful of people from that place that they all say was great, which they all fled. Another advantage to bringing in this many people from elsewhere is that they will bring another culture into your organization, as a contrast to your existing culture. Sort of a checks and balances thing to make sure your culture never gets too strong. Learning how great things were at the other place and how much better run it was is also fun to talk about at lunch or during a crisis.

Sometimes you have to work to find referrals. If you don’t get any responses when you ask if anybody knows anyone that they want to recommend, there are two things that could be going on:

1. Everyone has friends that would be absolutely great, but they hate working here and wouldn’t want to put their friends through that.

2. They have no qualified friends.

In either case, offer a bonus to anyone who brings in a referral.

• In Option 1, this puts a price on their friendship or creates an incentive for them to recruit people that they know are just competent enough to be hired.

• In Option 2, your staff turns into amateur recruiters.

Both methods create a rich pipeline of strangers, idiots, and strange idiots that you can use to fill your positions.