IT sourcing and technical recruiting programmers can be tricky. To make it easier you need to define who you are looking for and where they are. There are two types of questions you should ask yourself before starting talent sourcing.
Firstly: Where do my tech talents live? Can they relocate? Can they work remotely? In case of remote work, which time zones can you consider?
Secondly: What skills are the most important?
The key to tech recruitment is to act fast so tech talents won’t be taken from you before you even realize it.
The more candidates, who have skills matching your job description and are willing to work in the location you offer, you source the higher possibility to find the right tech talent for the position. Each time you find potential candidate you have to verify and measure their coding skills to find out whether they will be able to perform the job you are hiring them for. Therefore the best way to do this is to provide them with real life coding tasks. By giving them coding test that imitates 1st day at work experience and is based on your company’s code base, you will be able to select these candidates who are most likely to perform well your programming tasks and thus have the biggest potential. If the candidate’s coding skills match what you are looking for then you check their soft skills, arrange the interviews and hire the best of the best. The whole process should be carried out within 2-3 weeks. That’s what is called hiring fast.
The main problem however is to find these candidates who match your job description. You have tried LinkedIn and as you know, it doesn’t always give the best results, especially if it comes to the technical recruitment. Some tech talents ignore emails from this site and don’t update their profiles. IT sourcing is challenging.
You need to think more outside the box. The most important is to define proper keywords. Be creative and think of as many keywords as possible. Be open to non-standard descriptions such as “geek,” “nerd”, “ninja”, “techie,” “evangelist,” “droid,” “drone” to name a few. Tech talents often write about their job as playing or having fun (“playing on the computer”, “playing with networks”). If you recruit worldwide, be open to use foreign languages as well. Even if the profiles aren’t in your native language, most of the programmers can communicate in English.
Here are some places where you can source your candidates to expand your tech talent pool.
Twitter is used by many tech talents. It is a place you can use your creativity since there are so many tags you can look up. There are apps for doing an excellent search for you such as Twitterfall or TweetDeck. Check the followers, retweets.
It may be difficult to look through Facebook in search of candidates. They know how to use their privacy settings. Coders often hide themselves from you or they show you unrelated information. That’s why it’s wiser to look for fan pages, companies, groups and events related to tech world, programming languages etc. Check the comments, likes, members’ lists.
Blogs
Many tech talents are running their own websites or blogs. Use your search engine intelligently and you will find passionate developers who match your needs. Don’t forget to check the comments, blogroll lists to extend your search.
Meetups
Going to meetups and events is the best way to find people and build relationship with them. It also helps you sourcing candidates directly. If you don’t feel like going to the event or even you are not allowed to go as non-technical, you can search communities and source potential candidate names by a group they belong to. Websites such as MeetUp und Eventbrite can be of great help.
Github
Github is an open source code repository site and has an advanced search engine that helps you discover users based on their specific technical talents, keywords mentioned in their profile, location. You need to know what you are looking for more specifically since they are all programmers there.
Tools supporting IT sourcing
Sites which aggregate data from other websites to provide a database of potential candidates are another good place to source your candidates. Look for portals such as Entelo or TalentBin.
Job boards
Job boards are not dead, especially if you are sourcing IT locally. Check the boards, post your offers on them and be amazed how many people you can find by this old-fashioned way.
StackOverflow
StackOverflow is a question and answer site for tech professionals. It has users from all over the World who build their reputation by answering questions other users have posted. Users can list tags of skill sets in their profile, allowing you to search based on specific skills or project types. If you become a user, you can answer questions to build your reputation (don’t worry, there are some questions which aren’t directly related to programming).
Quora
Quora is a question and answer forum where you should look for technical questions and threads. Then check people who answer the questions as they may match your offer. If you become an active user and help tech talents, you will be more recognizable and they will find you even before you will find them.
Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest
Image sharing sites are also your ally. This may look silly and you have to go through many profiles but these sites are places where you can catch tech talents off guards. Look for hashtags such as: #hackathon, #programmerlife, #programming, #developers, #coding. Try to search for programming languages, frameworks.
IT sourcing is hard and time-consuming. To make it smarter, plan your sourcing time, think carefully about keywords and you will likely find the best people to test and hire.
