Where to source top talent?

**Paralytic** · 17 March 2021, 17:10

I know you're suggesting this is a great package for people, but in my experience the quality of talent rises with pay/benefits. So, if you're not finding the talent, you're not offering enough (or you, as a client, have a terrible reputation)

"Competitive" is typically what HR-bods call rates that align with their peers in the market.

Are these perm or contract roles? If contract, then the day rate is the driver - contractors (by and large) don't care about your foosball table and free quinoa smoothies.

Or maybe your selected recruiters are just rubbish; everyone is saying this is a buyers market.

Obvious: but have you tried LinkedIn?

**eek** · 17 March 2021, 17:16

Originally posted by RedSauce View Post

I am trying to fill 18 engineering roles on my team. We are US based (with a LDN office) and are willing to pay US rates which is incredibly competitive in today's market. We have a number of recruiters working on the roles but are not really seeing many good candidates.

The company is a great company to work for and has won lots of awards for culture and WLB but we can't seem to attract great engineers. Does anyone have any advice on how to attract rockstar talent?

Sorry - I saw it's React.

But equally I wonder if the issue is your attitude - you typical Brit doesn't care about whether he's rockstar talent or not he just knows he's good or not.

and if you are looking for React skills in London you have a lot of well paying competition as Google / Facebook and co all recruit there.

**Lance** · 17 March 2021, 17:28

what skills?
what rate?
outside or inside IR35?

You might get some interest here depending on the answers.
Most agents are crap, so you need to make sure they have a good 'job' description. If they don't have a good one they're only gonna find tulip.

**jamesbrown** · 17 March 2021, 18:20

My guess is your expectations are inconsistent with your rates, so lower your expectations or raise your rates. If you really want the pinnacle of anything, then you'd better be offering the pinnacle of rates too - I doubt you are

. Then add 10% for currency risk, as applicable.

**RedSauce** · 17 March 2021, 18:57

It is 5 years since I last contracted so I may be out of date with what market rates are.

The ranges we are offering are:

Engineer (2-4 years experience) - 300-330 pd
Senior Engineer (4-7 years exp) - 450 - 550 pd
Lead/Staff Engineer - (7+ years exp) 550 - 650 pd

I thought they were pretty competitive.

**jamesbrown** · 17 March 2021, 19:04

Not my area, but let's say "rockstar" is the 90th percentile and above. The 90th percentile of London rates for the Lead of anything must surely be well north of £650 pd. Take that fwiw (not much

). You can probably get an idea of the percentiles/quantiles from your favorite website though.

**JohnM** · 18 March 2021, 09:39

React/Angular/Vue are difficult skills to recruit what you describe as 'rock star talent' for

There are 3 types of react/angular/js developer

1) the first and most common is one who has come from a HTML/CSS background as a front end dev/designer. These guys have not had a grounding in proper programming ie using a compiled language like Java/C# etc

2) the second are programmers who have used Java/c# and have worked with web frameworks using these languages and have now moved into react. These guys a lot of the time have not done as much front end work as they suggest, true full stack developers only really exist on small one or two man team contracts.

3) the third are the guys from 1 and 2 who are genuine 'rock stars' as you describe and have worked on it non stop for for 5 or 6 years plus and have lots of enterprise level real life experience. These guys are few and far between, its not easy to recruit genuine top class React/vue/Angular developers

**eek** · 18 March 2021, 09:43

Originally posted by jamesbrown View Post

Not my area, but let's say "rockstar" is the 90th percentile and above. The 90th percentile of London rates for the Lead of anything must surely be well north of £650 pd. Take that fwiw (not much

). You can probably get an idea of the percentiles/quantiles from your favorite website though.

I suspect it's more - there are a lot of £650 pd React contracts where I would have a chance given my React skills but I wouldn't call myself a rockstar - react is a minor but essential part of my skill set.

**Fraidycat** · 18 March 2021, 11:48

Originally posted by RedSauce View Post

It is 5 years since I last contracted so I may be out of date with what market rates are.

The ranges we are offering are:

Engineer (2-4 years experience) - 300-330 pd
Senior Engineer (4-7 years exp) - 450 - 550 pd
Lead/Staff Engineer - (7+ years exp) 550 - 650 pd

I thought they were pretty competitive.

Those are average rates for London.
In general you will attract average talent by offering average rates.
However for every 10 average guys you hire you will luck out and one or two will turn out to be rock stars willing to work for average pay.
Just you wont always be able to tell the wheat from the chaff at interview.

My advice would be to up all your numbers by £100 at least (assuming outside IR35).

Also quickly fire any contractors who turn out aren't worth the money.

A true rock star engineer is worth £2000+ a day. They will produce at least 10 times the work an average engineer does.

Where to source top talent?