[Case Study] - WeLoveDevs.com’s CEO on recruiting & on payments

Damien, you’re the founder of WeLoveDevs.com (former JeChercheUnDev.fr) . Can you tell us a bit more about your background, about this project and the reasons you started it?

So we are now a grown company. We have helped 3000 developers in their quest for a better job over the last two years ! Our main mission is to help developers find a job they love. The developer’s hiring market is broken and all the solutions so far have been built by Recruiters. So problem is not solved. Our team of developers decided to tackle the problem and build a solution that only developers would have built. It appears the solution is to focus on what developers love.

Recruiting is key and I am sure you’ve learned a lot on this while developing WeLoveDevs.com. Any tips to share?

I think the main thing is to take time and be open. Most teams are very busy, they start by drawing the shape of the ideal applicant and don’t even notice that there is a lot of great people to work with that are not fitting the ideal applicant description. I think you should take the time to be kind to every applicant and be open-minded about what she/he could become when growing with your team.

When & how should a company think of working with freelance? From your point of view what kind of tasks can be done with freelance vs. full time employee?

Freelancers can provide great value with their experience and some specific field of expertise. You shouldn’t call a freelancer to tidy up your backyard while you can do it yourself. You should look for Freelancers that can bring you further than where your team can go by itself.

How did 2017 go for WeLoveDevs.com and what will be your key focus for 2018?

I think our product is now great, providing an awesome value to developers on both sides (teams looking for new people, and developers who would join a new team). We have 1500 companies using our product and offering positions to developers on it and we are looking to expand this. We want a developer to find his perfect job on WeLoveDevs.com, wherever it is. We are currently onboarding companies from Amsterdam, Montreal or Boston, it’s really exciting!

You recently wrote a blog article named “Fullstack developers do not exist”. I strongly recommend it. A short blurb to attract potential readers?

So first of all, you should know that it’s in French. It’s basically a very easy-to-read debunking of the Fullstack Developer. It really means more than : “Backend + Frontend = Fullstack”.

Going through your own blog, I must admit that you’re very good at finding great titles! Any idea for this article?

It could be “Next after hiring the best team of developers, your payment team is the most important thing - WeLoveDevs.com loves ProcessOut”!

Let’s talk payments, can you tell us a bit more about your payment set up & challenges?

So first of all, we want our payment solution to be very easy to maintain and have it to be very transparent to our customers. That’s where ProcessOut came out great. It was actually very easy to setup and we have Telescope giving us feedback at the right moment about how everything is going.

This way we can have a clear mind and focus on bringing value and love to our users.

Last but not least… Valentine’s Day is coming. Any present idea to seduce the dreamed developer?

Well, as well as in a love relationship, developer’s needs is our main consideration, presents are just icing on cake. But since you are working with the best engineers, make sure they have the best tools ! A mechanical keyboard with some Cherry MX switches is a very “connoisseur” thing. They are also rather hard to get. There is several kind of them (Red, Brown, Blue), you will rather make sure what is a good fit before buying the present!