Science Careers Blog

Here's an interesting discussion on Slashdot, in answer to the question 'how do you find programming superstars?'

How do I, as a company looking to hire such people, connect with them? Put another way, how do you the programming superstar go about looking for a company that seems like one you'd like to work for? The company I work for is a great place to work; we only hire really great people, we work on hard, interesting problems, and we treat our employees well. We aren't worried about retention or even about how to entice people to work here once we've found them. The problem is simply finding them.

The discussion is about programmers, but I think it applies equally well to all knowledge workers, including scientists. There's a lot of wisdom in this discussion, and it's useful for employers and employees alike. And since a big part of the challenge (in hiring and in reading blogs) is filtering the gold from the dreck, I'll reproduce here some of my favorite responses. First, from ShieldW0lf:

Great programmers work for who they want, on what they want. They take getting their personal needs met for granted, but they have grand ideas about things they want to see realized and not enough money of their own to do it.

So you advertise on the basis of the interesting work that you're doing, and aim for the ears of someone who has been itching to build such things rather than talking about the creature comfort and monetary perks.

Great people want strong leadership that will help them achieve beyond what they can do alone.

If you want to hire great scientists, offer them the opportunity to do interesting work that's better than opportunities they might have elsewhere. True enough, but not that helpful in distinguishing the superstars from the wannabees. Hence, from flannelboy:

The superstar is more than just somewhat hard to come by.

First, they are only going to be 1 out of every 100 programmers you work with. And that is only if you are lucky, and if you are good at hiring. If you hit job boards, you aren't good at hiring....

Second, they can almost never identify themselves. Lots of people THINK they are the superstar. But then they get very little actually accomplished. ... In this sense, they are also quite good leaders, although most do not want to manage large teams (and you'd be wise not to have them do so).

As far as finding and hiring them, the biggest problem is that they are very rarely on the market. So job boards are a bad place to start.

Just about all (maybe even 100%, actually) of the superprogrammers I've hired have come from friend referrals....

Next, from lgw:

You can't distinguish the top 1% from the merely arrogant in an interview, but if you do your interview wrong, or your working environment is clearly borked, then the top 1% will definitely self-select away from your company. ... you certainly can't spot them from their resumes.

Finally, there's this, from fyngyrz:

The first thing to do is remove arbitrary barriers. IE, "must" have X years of experience, X degree, held X previous positions, must move to our area. Instead, be willing to pay their moving expenses. Even buy their house if necessary.

If you want to hire a star -- someone who stands a chance of adding enormous value to your business/institution/venture for many years -- don't arbitrarily limit the pool. So remove that narrow language from your job description and your criteria, evaluate talent in creative and interesting ways. And realize that the true superstars are rarely the most visible, the ones everyone is competing for.

And what are the lessons for job seekers? If you're really good, and people know you're good, your odds of getting found via your network are greater than those of hooking up via traditional means. Please notice that this isn't the same thing as knowing a lot of people and "marketing yourself." You want a lot of people to know you do good work -- not that you promote yourself effectively.

A final observation. We can't all be superstars. But in my experience, if we focus on the work and find what we're best at, many of us can come pretty close. The trick is to find work that you're good at, that you care about -- really, deeply care about -- for its own sake (and not for the pay, benefits, or prestige), and that it's possible to make a living from that you're satisfied with.

Here's a link to the discussion on Slashdot.<