Last night we dined at the Open Kitchen with the Hire Space team. The dinner conversation was how to find the right tech talent for your team. We were joined by some interesting businesses including Worldinlondon, HireSpace, Fynder, Upmysport, Prehash and more. We also welcomed our new partner Elance-oDesk to the dinner table.

We had the pleasure to welcome two wonderful after dinner speakers: Will Swannell, Co-Founder of HireSpace and Dean Hume, CTO at HireSpace. Dean talked about how to attract and hire the right techies to work with. Will, who is non technical (but more technical than when he started!) talked about how he got it right, after getting it quite wrong for a year. They shared plenty of useful ideas and suggestions; we’ve included just a few of them here.

There was an important acknowledgement about how difficult it was to find technical people, which resonated with many people in the room – and reflected the challenge of all hiring, whatever the needed skill set. Dean suggested that people ask the question of whether they actually need to take on a developer – for simple projects, there is an abundance of tools available to non techies that could be an alternative or at least a start point. If there is a need, he recommended platforms like StackOverFlow for finding techies or platforms like Elance-oDesk for finding short term help.

When meeting, interviewing and taking on a developer, the most important thing, especially for a non technical hirer is communication. Is that person able to communicate and translate what they are doing technically to you, in a non technical way. Making them take tests, solve problems etc was also recommended, but clearly, there would need to be someone technical on the team already to issue, administer and rate the results of these type of tasks.

Providing a great environment to work is important, not only to attract, but also to hold onto that vital team member once you have found them (there was talk of hot roast potatoes rather than Haribos at a recruitment fair on a cold day – smart!). Developers are in demand, so they are likely to be approached by others wanting to poach them, so creating a workplace and team that they want to be part of and properly incentivising them is essential.

One last point to mention is to make sure the person you work with is of the right age and generation for the product you are planning to build. If you need new technologies and forward thinking, make sure the person’s experience and outlook matches this.

Here are some pictures for you to enjoy:

Thanks to everyone that joined the evening and to our speakers, it was great to hear their insights. There are big plans ahead for Hire Space and we’re looking forward to seeing them continue to grow.

A final thanks to our new sponsor Elance- oDesk for their support. Elance-oDesk help you to find, hire, and pay the world’s best freelancers, making it easier than ever to build successful companies and thriving careers.