USA
Colombia
Chile
Brazil
Costa Rica
Hungary
Bulgaria
Romania
Czech Republic
Poland
Portugal
Hiring technical candidates is far from easy. Strong competition for top programmers and the global tech talent shortage are just some of the challenges HR managers and recruiters face. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to source and hire tech talent, avoiding the pitfalls on the way.
The main challenges in tech candidates’ sourcing
Before discovering how to source technical candidates with ease and grace, let’s uncover the talent sourcing challenges you may face along your journey, so that you can develop a smart sourcing strategy, avoiding the possible pitfalls.
- Attracting the right candidates. Attracting the matching candidates is the biggest challenge for 76% of recruiters. What’s more, this challenge also has the reverse side of the coin. According to the Muse survey 2022, 72% of young workers also share that they have regretted accepting a job offer soon after getting started with it. That’s why most companies develop far-reaching and well-thought-out talent sourcing strategies and use advanced tools for candidate selection, matching, and vetting.
- Talent shortage. More than 50% of IT leaders globally reported tech talent shortage as the main obstacle holding them back. What’s more, the tech talent gap is projected to grow so the tasks of attracting the right employees and retaining them become equally important.
- Hiring speed. It takes 42 days to hire a candidate on average. For the tech projects going to be launched in highly dynamic and competitive markets, such a delay may play the difference between success and failure. That’s why software development companies and startups look for alternative ways to speed up the hiring process, for example, by partnering with IT recruitment and talent sourcing vendors.
- Non-specific job descriptions. 29% of global recruiters say the lack of job seekers applying for the open roles is the reason they can’t hire the right staff. There are several reasons why there are not so many candidates for the open position, and a non-specific job description is one of them. That’s why it is necessary to find a perfect balance between generic and too-detailed job postings.
How to source technical candidates step by step
So, what is the best way how to source tech talent? Follow the next tech sourcing process step by step.
Define the actual necessity to hire
The question may sound weird, but does your company actually need to hire additional employees? Sometimes, little changes in team management approaches or re-assigning tasks between the team members in a smarter way can let you avoid the necessity to hire a new employee along with the related costs.
Below are the cases when hiring a new employee is essential, so see for yourself whether some of them relate to your current business necessity:
- You face a sudden increase in workload
- You have the necessity to replace the employee urgently (for instance, because of the voluntary quit of the previous one)
- You launch a new project and require a completely new/specific skill set
- You face a lack of the necessary talent locally.
Tailor a recruiting tactic to the hiring necessity
At this stage, you should tailor a specific recruiting tactic to one of the hiring necessities described above. Here is how it can work.
- You can augment the team with remote developers if there is an increase in a workload
- You can headhunt for top talent if an employee left the company suddenly or was headhunted by your competitor
- You can use IT recruitment services to get started with a new tech project remotely
- You are welcome to consider global and remote hiring if there is a lack of local tech talent.
Gather your job requirements
The next stage of tech source recruitment is gathering and preparing your job requirements, which will become the foundation of your future job description and also allow you to create a perfect candidate persona (more about that in a bit). So, depending on the project specifics, you have to define:
- The role of a tech specialist you need (for example, QA engineer, Data Analyst, or other)
- The scope of their responsibilities
- The preferred background (for example, you can focus on the candidates with the experience in creating software for a specific niche)
- The preferred seniority that directly depends on the scope of the responsibilities you’d like to assign to a new employee
- The preferred education level and certificates. Build a perfect candidate persona
Being guided by your job requirements, draw a portrait of your perfect candidate. Make sure to specify the following points:
- Work experience.
- Education (degrees and certificates)
- Geographical location.
- Specific skill sets.
- Preferred work environment.
- Professional goals and motivators.
Here is what a candidate persona can look like.
“A Middle Software developer with 3 years of experience in fintech development, a Bachelor’s degree in software engineering, and strong possession of Python, Django, and TensorFlow, eager to work remotely”.
Write a great job description
Writing a compelling job description is one of the most difficult tasks when sourcing technical candidates. The matter is that in the case of tech talent recruitment, a job description works like an ad in marketing, so your task is to grab the candidate’s attention, persuade them that your offer is the best, and trigger their desire to apply or even compete for a job opening.
That’s why your job description should never be generic. Instead, it should be detailed enough, providing all the essential information about your company. It is also important to focus on the benefits for candidates, but for this, you should define the job seekers’ goals and motivators.
For example, they may appreciate a flexible schedule, absence of micro-management, great corporate culture, and even the design of the office. So, below are the essential points to specify in your job description.
- Company’s background
- Candidate’s responsibilities
- Skills, requirements, and experience
- Schedule
- Salary and bonuses
- Office location or remote
- Contact data for getting in touch easily
Pitch your job description to the right platforms
To find tech talent as quickly as possible, post your job description on the right platforms. Below are the top ones to spread the word about your job opening and attract the right candidates.
Toptal vs Turing vs Andela vs Arc vs Bridge: Which Is the Best Option for Hiring Remote Tech Talent?
- Indeed
- Glassdoor
- Angellist
- Local job boards
- Company’s website (for the companies with a strong employee brand)
- Social media
Proceed with searching on your own
After you have posted your job description, it’s time to look for suitable candidates on your own. So, where to hire software developers? First things first, consider the same platforms you have posted your job description on. Most of them have databases of candidates’ CVs that you can filter using the keywords, plus search by location. In addition to the candidates who are looking for a job actively, pay attention to the ones in passive search, since 73% of candidates are passive job seekers.
You can also ask your colleagues for recommendations, search in dedicated tech talent sourcing databases or get in touch with a talent sourcing vendor. The latter option promises an opportunity to significantly speed up the hiring process, find the best talent either locally or globally, and cut recruitment costs.
Bridge would be happy to support you with more effective tech talent sourcing. Contact us now to facilitate the hiring process and reach out to the best-in-class programmers in a flash!
Craft personalized emails and messages to candidates
After you have handpicked suitable candidates, you are welcome to reach out to them using the communication channels specified in their resumes. Never write spammy messages. Instead, try to make your emails more personalized and add a human touch. For example, you may specify what impressed you the most about the experience of a particular candidate to show that you’ve actually looked through their resume before reaching out.
Below are the best practices for crafting a candidate’s outreach message:
- Double-check the candidate’s name. Some candidates may perceive a mistake with a name as a joke while others may get heavily annoyed.
- Ask whether they are open to job opportunities. Show respect for their time and ask whether the candidate can be interested in a new job opportunity.
- Provide a brief description of your opening. Take one more look at your job description and shorten it, leaving the most important information only.
- Engage the candidate to communicate further or at least, stay in touch. Share your contact data so that the candidate can respond to you in a way they find comfortable.
Leverage data-driven recruitment
Using talent sourcing technology is the top approach to automate the routine processes, manage candidates more effectively and make data-driven hiring decisions. Below are the tools you are welcome to use.
- An Applicant Tracking System (ATS). An ATS is an advanced, usually AI-powered software that allows for automating job posting, gathering the candidates’ applications, scheduling the interviews, and moving the candidates through a hiring pipeline using a single platform. The most popular ATS solutions on the market are Paylocity, Workday, and ZohoRecruit. We at Bridge have also developed a customer-only candidate management system to streamline the IT recruitment process, getting started from posting your job requisition and ending with scheduling interviews with fitting candidates.
- Recruiting Management System (RMS). An RMS is a more advanced solution compared to ATS. Most Recruitment Management Systems come with ATS-native features, plus help the companies develop relationship management functions to keep promising candidates connected and engaged.
- AI Candidate Matching System. While hiring the right candidates is the biggest challenge recruiters face, using an AI-powered matching system is a smart and data-driven approach. For example, with the help of Circa, you can avoid recruitment biases and rank candidates depending on how well their skills match your job requirements.
- Candidate Automation Outreach System. For example, with the help of Reply.io, you can send emails and social media messages to candidates automatically, gather and filter their responses, plus analyze the effectiveness of the outreach campaigns.
Select the best candidates
Congratulations, you are done! The only task remaining is to select the best candidates and send them a job offer, but before you do it, pay attention to one more tactic to hire technical candidates faster and more effectively.
Bonus! The smartest tip to reach out to tech talent
So, the process of sourcing technical candidates is long and challenging. Fortunately, there is a smarter way to hire tech talent at a lower cost and effort. Consider sourcing-as-a-service for remote teams with Bridge to get a list of pre-vetted candidates, carefully selected according to your job requirements. Such a simple approach allows for skipping the first seven steps of the strategy we have described above and instantly proceeding with reaching out to suitable candidates.
Below are some more benefits of sourcing-as-a-service at Bridge:
- Speed. With us, you can increase your outreach by 5 times, as our sourcing is 80% automated.
- Data-driven match. We use a powerful sourcing engine to carefully tailor the candidates to your job requirements and allow you to make the best hiring decisions.
- Cost. The average cost per hire is $4,400, while sourcing-as-a-service with us lets you decrease this figure up to several times.
- Global or local reach. Depending on your hiring goals, we can source the candidates from either the local or global talent pool.
Try sourcing-as-a-service now to leverage all the benefits of effective and data-driven hiring!
Conclusion
Sourcing technical candidates can never happen in the blink of an eye. It requires long research and careful candidate validation, however, you still can streamline the tech talent recruitment by partnering with a talent sourcing vendor. Bridge has an extensive database of best-in-class tech candidates and would be happy to source them for your project.
Contact us today to gather a team of top-notch developers!
