Technical Recruiting For Dummies. Attracting The Top Talent

Do you know how difficult it is to find a technical talent? Of course, you do! You might be digging through all those platforms for IT specialists, but with no result. You might be sending plenty of requests, but hardly anybody replies to them. 

What is wrong? What should you change to attract top talents? Is there any technical recruiting for dummies guide with all the tips to help you? Read on our guide to learn how to recruit top tech talent.

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Know what you want

You must be contacting technical talents every day or even several times a day. What do you start your communication with? If you want to get a reply, start the process with the job description.

Be precise. Nobody wants to waste time on irrelevant information. Therefore, if you want them to read your message till the end, include information relevant to them there. Here are some options that you might want to consider:

• Tell some words about the company. A specialist should know who is the potential employer. Otherwise, there is no sense to continue reading your offer. The only exception might be if your company is a well-known brand and doesn’t need a special introduction.
• Explain why the potential hire might be interested in the position that you offer. Specify what his/her role will be and how he/she will be participating in the company’s life.
• Indicate what skills you need. The potential candidate should be able to assess whether he/she is suitable for the job.

Highlight your strength

Tech talents want to work in the best companies. It is good if your company is an established brand. But how to perform IT recruitment if you work for a smaller company or a startup?

Any company has some strength and definitely has some benefits to offer to its potential employees. Your task is to see those strengths and to show them to the potential hires.

For example, your company might be launching a new project. So, the new hire will work on it. Mention it at the initial stage of a technical recruiting process. Explain what kind of project it is and why it should be interesting to the candidates.

Specify what effects it is going to have on the company and the world outside of the company. Show the potential hire that this might be a great opportunity to work with something relevant and interesting.

Know what developers want

If you want to find the best tech talents, you should understand what they want from a new position. The success of recruiting tech talent is in knowing the developers’ needs and clarifying how they are going to be considered in the company.

The main needs and wishes of developers are:

• Identification with the goals of the company: if the developer doesn’t feel himself/herself as a part of the company, he/she will not be interested in the position. It does not depend on which strategies you apply, the chances to succeed are very low.
• A decent salary: nobody wants to work for free. Hiring tech talent is not easy nowadays, that’s why a salary should be rewarding.
• Interesting products: high-class specialists are demanding to the projects they work on. They want to solve challenges, to look for solutions, to invent new ways of doing things.
• High-grade equipment: everybody wants to work with cool tools and the most advanced hardware. If your company can provide it, this is a definite advantage. Mention it during the IT recruiting process.
• Independence: tech talents prefer to have a particular independence level when working on a product or service. They want to make decisions independently whenever their qualifications allow. If your company allows it, it is definitely an advantage.
• An opportunity to work remotely: some specialists believe that they are more efficient when working from home. That’s why they would like to work remotely if the position allows it. Hence, if there is a chance for remote work, mention it.
• Professional management: developers want to communicate with people who understand the field.

Use data

To succeed in technical recruiting, you need to have all the information about the labour market. Use all the available data about the conditions in the labour market, workforce trends and other factors that might influence the tech talent recruiting results.

Research on competitors

In some cases, the situation with competitors might differ from the one you imagine. It is common to believe that competitors are those companies that produce the same products or provide the same services. This is the main problem in technical recruiting. However, with the development of the internet and digital technologies, things have changed. Nowadays, you should consider not only the so-called “industrial competitors”, but digital competitors or SEO competitors.

Research the market, learn the main competitors and pay attention to the tech talent who will lead your company to a new level.

Consider hidden costs connected with talent acquisition

When the company is hiring tech talent, the expenses are not limited to salaries only. If the company needs to rent expensive offices, these expenses are also related to technical recruiting and hiring tech talent. 

If the company is forced to comply with some specific rules, and it leads to additional expenses, you should also consider these expenses as those related to hiring tech talent. In some cases, it is enough to check a different location where the costs will be lower. You should consider these details during the recruitment of tech talent.

Supply doesn’t mean availability

If there is a good supply of talent, it doesn’t mean that you will find the right candidates easily. If the competition is high, you might have problems with finding the right talent. What about checking a region with a lower competition level? Of course, the supply might be lower, as well. But there, you have better chances to hire tech talent because the competition is not high.

Be specific with job requirements but don’t go into details

It’s a good idea to be specific about the job. Mention the main requirements so that candidates could assess if they are a good fit for the position. Do it at the initial stage of the technical recruiting process. However, avoid being too detailed. Some managers include not only the requirements needed for the job but their personal requirements, as well. It confuses the candidates. That’s why you might not be able to find a proper fit.

Learn technical terms

Some recruiters ignore it, but you are not one of them, are you? You should know what you are talking about. We know that in most cases, recruiters are not developers. That’s why understanding all those technical terms related to the field might be challenging. But if you want to hire the right talent, you need to know the basics. In the very end, even to create a correct job description, you need to understand the basics of the job.

Do not be too technical though. You might know many technical terms, but developers want to communicate with a person, not a machine. That’s why keep your messages “human”.

Improve the interview process

The interview is one of the most important parts of a technical recruiting process. That’s why it’s hard even for the most confident candidates. Your task is to improve the interview process as much as you can. And believe us, you can do a lot. Here are just some things that you can do to make the interview friendlier and less stressful:

• Inform the applicants who will be interviewing them;
• Provide some flexibility with the interview schedule;
• If a specialist is applying for a remote position or for some reason cannot come to the interview personally, make sure a remote interview option is available;
• Introduce the candidates to other team members to create a friendly environment.

These details will help the best-fit candidate to pass through this important stage of technical recruitment successfully.

Make them want to come to you

• This is one of the most challenging parts of technical recruiting. You should work continuously to create for the company an image to attract technical talent. There are several ways to do so:
• Make your job offer sound attractive. Mention the strength of the company and the advertised position. Do not forget to tell about the perspectives for the candidate if he/she is accepted for the position. This is important to start the technical recruiting process efficiently.
• Let the current employees help you. What can be more attractive for a potential hire than positive feedback from the people who work for the company?
• Design an advanced strategy. It will help you to track the applicants. Use special algorithms to simplify the search for and the selection of suitable candidates.
• Show the potential employees that they will get more than just a salary. Tell them that the company will consider their needs and values. Show them how they can develop themselves and grow in the new position. Then, they will be interested in the results of the tech recruitment process.

Choose the right sourcing channels

Now, the preparation works are over. You have an appealing job description. You have determined your strength, requirements, needs. You have indicated what the tech talent gets if they are hired. It is time to contact the candidates to start the actual recruiting process.

Do you know how are you going to do it? Of course, you can use any sourcing channel to contact the tech talent, but not all options will be successful. Let us give just a quick example: what job offer would sound more reliable to you: the one that you get to your mail or the one that is sent in a messenger on a dating website?

Hence, it is crucial to select a sourcing channel that will make the potential candidate trust you from the very start.

Linkedin

Linkedin is a network created for specialists and their clients. There, companies look for potential employees and talents look for jobs. This network is a perfect base for hiring tech talent. You can check the potential candidate’s experience, qualifications and all the job-relevant information in his/her profile. This network provides you with an opportunity to contact the right candidates personally.

Job posting platforms

There are many platforms where you can create a job posting. Interested specialists will be contacting you on their own. Your task will be to determine who is the right fit and to arrange further procedures.

Freelance websites

Normally, you have two options if you decide to proceed with recruiting on freelancer websites:

• You can post a job and wait for the specialists to start bidding. After that, you select the most suitable candidates.
• You can contact the freelancers personally. It might be a more time-demanding procedure. But it ensures that you will communicate with freelancers with the needed skills and qualifications.

Stackoverflow and Github

These are communities for developers. There, they can share their experience and knowledge, get acquainted with the latest trends and developments, and look for jobs, of course. You can place a job there and wait for suitable candidates to reply to your technical recruiting offer. The main advantage of these platforms and their main difference from freelancer websites is that they are created for specialists. Hence, your chances of getting irrelevant bids are minimized. It increases the efficiency of the technical recruiting process immensely.

Technical recruiting platforms, such as YouTeam, Codementor, HackerEarth

The main advantage of technical recruiting platforms is that they help you to select the best candidates. It means that you will be offered the most suitable candidates only.

Staff augmentation companies

If you want to get the ultimate solution for tech talent recruitment, the best option is to address your needs with a staff augmentation company. All of them work based on the same principle: for a fee, they look for specialists who comply with your requirements.

If you need a dedicated team, they will create it for you. It is a wonderful option if you want all the jobs done by specialists. In some cases, an IT staff augmentation company will offer you to administer your team. It is an option for those who are looking to hire tech specialists remotely.

How our company helps to recruit the best tech talent

Technical recruiting is a challenging job. We know it, that’s why we are always here to help you recruit and hire tech talent. We have the best-fit specialists, real experts in their fields. We have a pool of talents to work on your project.

You might be wondering what happens if we don’t have the right specialist. If you need a specialist with rare skills, and we don’t have the expert at the moment, we will find one and hire him/her, especially for your project. 

Hence, with us, you save time and money. You use the human resources that we have already. You don’t need to look for the right specialists, test them, and do all the paperwork.

We look for specialists based on your requirements

To provide you with an optimal solution, we need some information about your requirements:

• Job description;
• Description of a project you need specialists for;
• The size of the future team;
• Workflow.

We assemble the team within record time

If we have suitable experts, you can hire them immediately. However, if the specialists with the needed skills are not available, we will need up to 1 month to find them for you. Do you need experts urgently? Let us know, and we will use all our resources to find them within one week.

We select candidates for an interview with you

We do not send to you each candidate who seems to be suitable. Our HR team performs the assessment of the candidate’s skills, background, English level, and so on. Only the best-fit candidates are directed to you for a final job interview.

We integrate our team into your projects

With the hiring tech talent, our work is not completed. We integrate our team into your projects. You decide how you will manage them and what tools will be used. We recommend though to meet your team members personally. You can invite them to your office or you might want to visit them in our office.

You get a fully-functional team

We assemble for you a fully-functional team. The only difference from an in-house team is that our specialists work remotely. Our company handles all the administration procedures, so you can concentrate on the matters relevant to work. You pay a monthly fee, and we do the rest. We pay salaries to the specialists, provide them with a working place, and similar. 

Technical recruiting done professionally: some words to wrap up

Recruiting tech talent like software developers is challenging. However, if you use the right approaches and tools, you will be rewarded by the best-fit candidates for your company. In our technical recruiting for dummies guide, we have tried to cover the most rewarding ways to find, attract, and, finally, to hire suitable tech talent. 

Select the most suitable options for you and do not hesitate to use all the opportunities that modern technologies provide you with.