Why we are building a new marketplace for projects and talent

After many years as a software developer and entrepreneur I have come to the realization that hiring the right technical talent is one of the most if not the hardest thing for startups and companies of all sizes.

Everyone can attract people to fill out resumes and come to interviews, finding people with the right attitude towards your brand, product and industry it’s what’s hard, extremely hard.

About company culture

Everyone talks about company culture, here, here and also here and how it helps with the hiring process and to maintain a great company culture. I love every one of those posts and the writers, but when it comes to hiring having a great company culture can be both good and bad. It can be bad if you don’t have a simple way to filter candidates that will excel at your company. Think about it, companies with great cultures will attract everyone and not only the people with the skills and more importantly the attitude that you and your business needs.

If your company has a great culture it probably attracts a lot of good and bad candidates and this is a big problem as it increases the chances of missing out on people who could have done great at your company. It is also a big burden for your recruiting team, specially if they don’t have a simple way to filter candidates.

The pain

Hiring is very hard and hiring the wrong people can be extremely costly for both your bottom line and your company culture. Bad employees not only slow down your business but they can also be every harmful to your company culture. That is a big problem. What to do about it? many businesses rely on intensive interviews to get the best people out there, others test candidates extensively hoping to find the best and some others rely on recruiters to send them people with the right skills. All of these solutions can work, and many large companies don’t have any other options but to rely on one or many of these solutions. Many companies don’t have the time to cherry-pick candidates, so most of them just end up hiring good enough people to fill in the openings they have, that is the truth.

About interns and consultants

What about interns and consultants you might ask? unfortunately the number of companies that bring in interns and consultants as a first step to hiring is not a large number. Most of interns and even consultants end up working doing tasks that full-time employees don’t want to do or are too busy to work on it. This makes it hard to filter good hiring candidates from the not so good as they don’t get to work in real projects in most cases. Also, hiring consultants from big recruiting firms isn’t always the best, most of them have such high demand for technical people that they also have a very hard time finding technical talent… and forget about relying on them to help you find the right fit for your company, they just don’t have the bandwidth or knowledge to help you with that.

About large job marketplaces

What about the large job marketplaces such as oDesk or Elance? they might seem like a great source of technical talent, but you basically have the same problem as hiring people directly, there are just too many people to choose from! These are global marketplaces with no filters to join as a professional or to post jobs. You can post a job, wait for the many replies you’ll get (including spam) and if you are lucky, you could probably find great people to help you with your project or to work at your company. That is the problem, no filters.

What we offer you

Keep on reading, we are getting close to what we are offering, I promise! so, what about other startups such as TheIdealists.com or idealist.org? well, these marketplaces are for marketing and volunteering opportunities, they only concentrate in a small niche as we are now by offering very similar features with our marketplace targeting individuals with ideas and companies that are looking for people with technical talent such as developers, designers, copywriters and growth-hackers. Why is this better than getting the help of recruiters or hiring consultants directly? because we are the people who you want to hire, our team is composed of developers, designers and other technical talent who hand-pick every talented person that joins our network. We are the filter that is missing in most solutions described earlier. Also, by finding technical people to work in your project or company through us you can have the piece of mind that not only are you getting access to the best talent out there, but you are also getting access to people with the right attitude which is measured by getting feedback from people like you after they’ve done their job. Using our platform is also safer for both parties, when someone posts a new project in our marketplace and it is accepted, we secure the total amount budgeted for the project and this amount is given to the professional who works in the project when everything is done and accepted by the individual or company posting the project.

A highly curated marketplace of projects and talent, that is what we offer.

Do you want to learn more about it? sign up to our newsletter and keep in touch. An invitation-only phase is going to start soon and it will help if we know who you are.

If you are a Twitter user, follow us at @OnTechies as we are also going to be sending updates and giving invitations to our followers.

To learn more about our new marketplace, visit our site here.

Related articles

• How to hire (samaltman.com)
• Is The Best Candidate Wrong For Your Startup? (tech.co)