I’m building a fintech SaaS with my co-founder. We’re a bootstrapped, small team. Hiring engineers in general was okay-ish. Slow, but manageable.
AI/ML roles though, completely different story.
At one point I thought maybe we’re the problem. Like maybe we’re screening wrong or writing a bad JD or something.
But the same issues kept coming up:
- a lot of profiles, very few who’ve actually built something end-to-end
- people strong on models, but not much experience shipping or maintaining systems
- Freelancers going silent after a week
- Some agencies just forwarding resumes without much filtering
- Few solid candidates, way out of what we can afford right now
We easily lost a few weeks just talking to people who looked great on paper.
At some point we stopped posting jobs and started trying more curated options. Looked at a few platforms where candidates are already vetted. Came across Uplers during that process.
What I liked there was the starting point felt better. The profiles were more aligned with what we were actually looking for, so we weren’t filtering from scratch every time.
As a foiunder, I'm still figuring this out though.
Feels like you either spend a lot, or spend a lot of time. Sometimes both. How are you guys hiring for these roles? Especially if you’re not VC funded.