A company in Texas was trying to hire a C++ programmer. They were getting absolutely no candidates. So they asked a development forum for help in determining what they were doing wrong. Let’s see what actual developers told them.Actually we can start with the ad this company placed. They were looking for a video software engineer. They require solid video experience. And they want with app or driver experience. There are some other details like full life cycle, high reliability, and multi threading. But you get the idea.
Most of the comments from developers was to list the salary being offered. Even if it was just $85k, the amount might get you some bites. You can get a lot of interest if you list the pay rate as $160k per year. One guy came out and said “everything has a price”.
Next you can reword your job listing copy. Change the job title, as a video engineer is rare. Or you could just list the bare minimum of requirements and weed out the candidates that come in.
Another tactic is to relax the requirements for the job to open the net wider. You could accept non-local candidates. You could also allow working remotely. Perhaps you could also consider C# or Java programmers who could pick up C++.
There might be a root problem preventing candidates from coming in. Good C++ developers are working on Wall Street or doing game development. C++ developers usually stay at their companies for a long time. It is rare to be able to catch them between jobs. Depending on how you look at it, C++ is either dying or becoming a niche market.
I personally love C++ development. For the last 10 years I have been coding mainly in C++. Although I am not tied to it, I prefer coding in C++. Unfortunately I am too far away from this particular job opportunity.
