Hirelite Blog

When you say "rock star" in your job post, you're discouraging the best software developers from contacting you.

When you write, "We're looking for a rock star developer."
A developer sees, "We want to treat a developer like the RIAA treats rock stars."

Using "rock star" in your job post may have communicated a trendy vibe at one point, but those times have passed. Now it communicates a desperate attempt to seem cooler than you really are, a sign that you're too full of yourself, or that you're just naive. 

Now here's how musicians are paid in relation to real rock stars [3, 4].

So next time you're thinking about saying rock star, ninja, guru, etc in your job post, consider it a sign that you have more thinking to do about your hiring requirements. Here are a few questions and trade-offs you should consider answering with your job post:

• Do you want a specialist or a generalist?
• If you want extraordinary people, can you compensate them extraordinarily or provide an extraordinary environment? 
• Do you want a technical person who cares more about the business/market challenges or do you want someone who cares more about the technical challenges? 
• Do you want someone who prefers quick, practical, "good enough" solutions or do you want someone who prefers to take their time and do things more maintainably or scalably?
• Do you want a feature developer or a maintainer? 
• Do you want a risk taker?

Let us know in the comments If you have any more high-level questions you like to have answered before you post a job description.

About Hirelite

Hirelite runs "speed interviewing" events over video chat to connect software engineers and companies hiring. If you're looking to evaluate the software job market or looking to hire, check out Hirelite.com.

Notes

Also, an associated queston on Hacker News a few months back was very helpful. Thanks for all the comments there today also.