Desperately Seeking Development Talent

 I recently had someone who is putting together a new Web 2.0 Startup in Houston ask me where they could find good development talent here in Houston.  This is not the first time someone has asked me this question, and in fact, I’ve been told by more than a couple of startups that they have had difficulty in finding the talent that they are looking for. 

Because of this I wanted to share with everyone all of the ideas that we have and ask that others share theirs as well.  As we reported here, the two toughest challenges that most Houston startups that we have talked to have reported facing are finding interested developent talent and available capital.  If we work together, I’m sure we can solve the talent issue easily enough.

So, here goes.  In addition to the standard ways of finding talent such as posting jobs on CareerBuilder, Monster, HotJobs, Dice, and LinkedIn, I would also recommend trying posting your positions on any of the following: 

• Cachinko.com (a Houston startup that offers a social networking job search platform)
  • Fee = ?
• nPost.com (a job search site dedicated to startups)
  • Fee = $80 / job / month
• the Houston Technology Center job board.  
  • Fee = $75 / job / month
• the Only In Houston web site.  The OiH’s mission is to “To promote the undeniable creative forces found within the city of Houston…”
  • Fee is $100-$150 total for 90 days listing
• Post your positions on all of the Houston college career sites.  Here are the careers links for
  • Rice University
  • University of Houston – Central
  • UofH-Downtown
  • UofH-ClearLake
  • St. Thomas University
• We here at StartupHouston have also added a new group to our forums called “People Finder” with forums for Startups looking to find talent, People who are looking to join startups, and People with Ideas who want to meet informally to talk with technical people about getting something started.
  • Fee = Free

In addition to those options, I would also recommend trying the following:

Attend some of the technical meetup groups here in town such as the Houston Flash Meetup Group, Refresh Houston , The Houston PHP Meetup Group , The Houston Web Design Meetup Group,  The Houston NetSquared Meetup Group, or Ruby on Rails Meetup Group, to let people know about what you’re looking for.  You can see the list we are currently tracking on our right-hand nav bar and on our calendar.

Do you have any other ideas on how to get or recruit talented developers in Houston for startups?  Share them in the comments section of this post, or share them in our forums (here).

Happy Hunting!