We are on the recruitment trail again. At a time where much of the e-business news is dominated by company closures and staff lay-offs it feels good to be bucking the trend and building the team again after a couple of months' pause.
Given the general depression surrounding the new-media environment we have been pleasantly surprised at the continued enthusiasm of potential recruits.
However, candidates are spending more time assessing us than they were doing six months ago. We spent as much time in a two-hour first interview with one candidate reviewing our business model, the market environment and company culture as we did evaluating him and his previous work.
Even disappointing personal experiences do not appear to have put some off dot.com start-ups. Our latest recruit has joined from a substantial internet exchange that went bust three weeks ago. You have to move quickly to get these guys because they are highly valued, not only for their specific expertise - in this case web design - but also for their direct experience of working in small, growing businesses.
The performance of many of the recruitment agencies that we have come across over the past six months has been consistent. Despite promises of a deep understanding of our needs and sophisticated filtering of potential candidates, our recruitment manager is still bombarded with wildly inappropriate CVs. These are regularly followed up with phone calls, further expounding on respective candidates' virtues and suitability.
But there are some exceptions and we are learning to work with these few recruitment partners.
The need to find decent recruitment agencies is all the greater at present because a focus is on building up the technical team - a real challenge. Though there is a good pool of contractors prepared to work on a short-term freelance basis, there are far fewer people looking for full-time work. This is partly because the market for contractors is so strong at the moment. Companies are being asked to pay more than £500 a day for a good freelance developer.
But it is the full-timers that we are after because we are building up the core technical competency within the business. By taking our time and sticking to our guns - even when advised by several IT recruitment agencies that it would prove impossible - we believe we have succeeded in finding the right people.
Adam Hamdy and Guy Mallison are the founders of rools, an online payments service for teenagers
