How to Hire a Technical Recruiter – Tips and Best Practices

The demand for engineering talent as well as the tech talent gap continues to grow, and so does the need for professionals able to find and attract these brilliant minds for tech projects. At this point, companies face a double challenge – hiring software developers and hiring a tech recruiter to find them. 

In our recent article, we explained the reasons to hire a technical recruiter, so today, we will discuss the ways to do it right. In addition, Bridge’s co-founder, Victor Lopatkin, will share the most important hard and soft skills to look for in your tech recruiter. 

Let’s start by clarifying why you’d want to hire a technical recruiter specifically.

Why do you need a technical recruiter and not just a generalist recruiter? 

The demand for technical recruiters grew by 200% in January 2022, compared to January 2021, being triggered by the increasing demand for development talent and global tech talent shortage. Below are the reasons why you should hire a technical recruiter in 2023 – until your competitors do it.

• They understand IT specifics. If we compare a technical recruiter vs a recruiter-generalist, the former stands out with a deep understanding of IT specifics and IT labor market trends. 
• They know what matters most for software developers and can come up with a personalized approach to each candidate. Tech talent recruitment and marketing have something in common – to attract top candidates, you have to spark their interest in your position and prove the value it has. Tech recruiters know how to identify and meet tech candidates’ expectations. 
• They speak with candidates in their language. Since tech recruiters have both understanding of the hiring process and popular technologies, it is easier for them to communicate with software developers, deliver your value proposition and nurture the best candidates step by step. 
• Most tech recruiters use candidate sourcing automation tools. Since tech recruiters usually have to hire from a global talent pool, they leverage AI-powered solutions for more accurate candidate search and pre-screening, interview scheduling, and role-based testing. 

What technical recruiter skills should you look for? 

When you’re looking for a tech recruiter to fill a position at your company, it’s essential to make sure they have the right skill set. Here are some key technical recruiter skills that you should look for. 

Communication and negotiation

Tech recruiters need to be able to communicate clearly with their clients and candidates to make sure everyone is on the same page. They also need to be able to negotiate salaries and benefits effectively, persuade the best candidate to accept a job offer, and help both parties reach their goals. 

Creative and analytical thinking

A tech recruiter needs creativity to come up with innovative ways of finding candidates who match the client’s requirements. They also need analytical thinking skills to analyze resumes and interview questions and determine which candidates will be best suited for the position.

Understanding psychology basics

Tech recruiters should be able to understand basic psychological concepts such as motivation and emotion so that they can better connect with candidates during interviews. They should also be able to understand the personality types that are most likely to succeed in a given job. 

Organizational skills

A good tech recruiter should have good organizational skills as well. They need to be able to keep track of who they’ve talked to and what the outcome was, so they can follow up appropriately. 

“Being self-organized is one of the most important skills we are looking for in our tech recruiters. – says Victor Lopatking, Bridge’s co-founder. – Our sourcers are handling communication with hundreds of candidates across multiple roles. It is inevitable that things will start slipping through the cracks. It is critical that they can stay organized and get outreach and ongoing candidate communication back on track when needed.” 

Understanding of business and technology 

Having an understanding of business processes and the ways technology streamlines them is also important for a tech recruiter. Here is what Victor Lopatkin says on this matter. 

“Candidates should be interested in tech and know what different stacks mean. Still, curiosity is often enough, we then train our team on front-end, and back-end languages/frameworks as well as cloud technology and data analysis tools.”

Steps to hire a technical recruiter

Now that we have discovered the skills and competencies that matter most for a tech recruiter and the company hiring them, let’s find out how to hire a technical recruiter. 

Prepare a job description and distribute it

The first step is to prepare a job description that highlights the position you’re looking to fill and what you’re looking for in an applicant. It’s important to be clear about what exactly makes someone qualified for the role so that you can find the right person for your company. Use the list of skills and competencies we have provided above as your guidance. Make sure to distribute your job ad across global and local job boards, social media, and your website. 

Review the profiles of the applicants

Once you’ve distributed your job description, take some time to study the profiles of the applicants you receive back. Are they experienced in your field? Do they have experience working with companies like yours? How many years has the applicant worked as a technical recruiter? How much experience do they have in finding candidates for roles like yours? These are all important questions to ask yourself as you review the resumes that come through your inbox.

Run interview sessions with the best candidates 

Below are the most important questions to ask a technical recruiter:

• What are your education, background, and experience? While the education of a tech recruiter shouldn’t necessarily relate to tech and management, having a relevant background and at least some years of experience in the field is paramount. 
• What hiring automation tools do you use? Candidate selection and pre-screening tools are the ones a tech recruiter must necessarily be skilled with. Additionally, you can train them to use other tools your hiring process requires. 
• What sourcing channels for tech talent acquisition do you use? As for this question, consider Victor’s Lopatkin opinion on the most important tech talent acquisition channels. 

“We, at Bridge, strongly believe that great tech recruiters should know how to work with data. In every sourcing project, there are multiple sources of data (LinkedIn, GitHub, Stackoverflow, Discord and Slack groups, custom lists, and so on). It is vital that the recruiter knows the role each of these sources plays in the overall project and when to tap into each one of them. There are datasets that are mutually exclusive and ones that are complementary to each other. Knowing which one is which allows us to find the proverbial “needle in a haystack”. 

• What do you consider the biggest challenge in hiring tech talent and how do you solve it? To give you an idea of what the answer to this question could be, we asked our in-house tech talent sourcers, Karina Shamaeva and Anastasia Shvetsova. Despite being interviewed separately, they gave us the same answer:

“The biggest challenge in hiring tech talent is defining the requirements and expectations of the customer with the technical skills, knowledge, and backgrounds the tech talent market actually can offer. As for the ways to solve this challenge, get back to the list of the skills a tech recruiter should have – great communication skills will help with getting as clear as possible and staying on the same page.”

Make a final decision

After you are done with all the aforementioned steps, the only task remaining is to make the final decision and hire a person with the most relevant background, sincere interest in helping your company with tech talent sourcing, and the necessary hard and soft skills. As for one more tip, choose a candidate you are most comfortable communicating with – in this way, achieving the goals will be easier for both of you. 

So, the process of hiring a technical recruiter doesn’t differ much from hiring software developers. The only difference is that you have to hire a recruiter once – and they will help you with attracting tech talent through your project lifecycle. However, if you want to avoid the headache of hiring both technical recruiters and software engineers, there is a one-stop solution Bridge would be glad to offer you. 

Hire a tech talent recruiter with Bridge

Hiring a tech talent recruiter is as challenging as hiring software developers. Still, there is a solution to both of the difficult tasks. With Bridge’s sourcing as-a-service, you can hire an experienced and tech-savvy tech recruiter who will help you attract the best candidates, choosing them from a global talent pool. 

When it comes to tech talent hiring, we equally bet on human recruitment experience and data-driven talent sourcing. Here is how we leverage data and automation in our talent sourcing process. 

“Most of our sourcers are working with data directly in databases, which allows them to be very granular in their filtering and search criteria. Most boolean searches will not get you close to the final addressable dataset, whereas working with each individual data point through complex SQL queries will. We want all of our sourcers to know what to include and exclude in each search, so that we are not left with a long tail of irrelevant candidates.” – Viktor Lopatkin, Bridges co-founder. 

A data-driven approach combined with manual candidate validation allows us to find the best-suited software developers 5 times faster and 60% cheaper compared to sourcing tech talent in a traditional way. Simply put, with us, you get two major benefits – a talent sourcing solution that automates 80% of the hiring process and practical experience of our tech-savvy talent recruiters. 

Extend your team with our tech talent recruiters now and get the first candidates in just a few days. Drop us a line right now to get started!