There’s rich teams, then there’s poor teams, then there’s 50 feet of crap, and then there’s us.  If you play like the Yankees in here we’ll lose to the Yankees out there.

This is my favorite line in Moneyball.  It’s when Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) tells his baseball scouts that the Oakland A’s can’t think like the Yankees in acquiring/developing baseball talent.  It’s interesting that Billy Beane is seen as this visionary who revolutionized baseball.  What I saw was a man who’s team was being gutted and was desperately looking for anything that would help him level the playing field of an unfair game (Oakland A’s budget is about 20% of the Yankees budget).     

Social enterprises, nonprofits, and bootstrapped businesses are at a similar disadvantage when it comes to hiring tech talent.  We’ve all heard the chatter that top tech talent is very difficult to acquire and retain.  So how is a company who can’t or shouldn’t pay $100k+ to their software and hardware engineers supposed to compete with the likes of Google, Facebook, or other venture capital backed companies?

Easy, stop looking for tech talent that is valued by other companies at $100k+.  In other words stop evaluating talent on their experience and likability.  What a nonprofit or social enterprise should be looking for is a band of misfits that is undervalued by the other companies for some reason.

Instead of looking at experience you can look at compatibility.  Instead of looking at “the right fit" you can look at the individual’s motivations.  

The first step is to measure your organizational culture so that candidates can be funneled on culture compatibility.  Human Synergistics and RoundPegg provide software and services for this purpose.  My MBA thesis was on the organizational culture of one of the banks where I used to work.  This research gave me some insight into how organizational culture can be measured and analyzed.

The second step is assessing the candidates individual motivations and self awareness.  Why does this candidate wake up every morning and come to work?  When this person looks back how will they measure their life?  Does the candidate’s motivations align with the company’s vision or are they in it for the money?  What work would you do for free if money and time wasn’t an issue?  What are his learning style strengths (auditory, visual, or kinesthetic)? 

Here is an idea on hiring developers who can do the job for cheap: Hire a junior developer (between 1-2 years programming) at $25 an hour and hire a knowledgeable part-time mentor for 4 hours a week at $80 an hour.  Total combined salaries for the year would be $68.6k.  The junior developer’s production would increase significantly every month for the next 24 months and he/she would no longer be a junior developer.  One of the most talented programming teachers I’ve ever seen is looking for this kind of opportunity to mentor apprentices without having to be at a specific location.  Everybody wins!

CHANGE THE GAME!