Hiring the right software developers is hugely important. It requires a large investment (up to $31,970) to get the right person. If you get it wrong, you could be looking at a loss of almost a half million dollars in the worst cases. So every professional and engaged tech recruiter worth their salt is constantly working to build a process that is both efficient and effective.
Hire the right tech talent
But it doesn’t have to be that hard. In this video, we explain our proven 7 step formula for hiring the right tech talent. Find out why you should,
- Start sourcing creatively, focusing on quality over quantity
- Start using an automated technical screening platform
- Run online coding interviews
- Make timely and fair job offers
- Make your recruitment team more technically aware
- Eliminate unconscious bias
- Nurture your candidates
Follow these steps to get better candidates that stay in your funnel for longer, and ultimately hire the best person for the job.
Video Transcript
I’ve just spent an hour interviewing a candidate we’re not going to hire. 5 minutes in, I knew it was a disaster but still had to stay there. Sounds familiar? It probably does. What if I told you there was a way out of this madness?
Our seven-step formula to hire top tech talent
At DevSkiller, we’ve designed and tested a seven-step formula to hire top tech talent. This formula addresses the biggest pain points of tech recruiters and developers. They include:
- a painfully long and confusing recruitment process,
- ridiculously high hiring costs
- wasting plenty of time on interviewing weak candidates
The problem is, recruiters don’t typically have the skills they recruit for so they need to ask developers to run technical interviews. The more they do that, the more frustrated developers get. Recruiters try to solve this problem by evaluating soft skills at the very beginning, but that’s another way of wasting time. They still don’t know if someone can code or not.
Alternatively, recruiters also try to exclude candidates based on their CVs, which still doesn’t have anything to do with coding skills. CVs can be misleading and this type of pre-screening typically results in losing good candidates. You should recruit people for their programming skills and not their resume writing skills.
Truth be told, all this creates a lot of tension between HR and IT.
The steps we’ll cover in this video can be applied to all of the stages of the recruitment process: sourcing, screening, interview, offer, and hire.
Let’s get this party started.
Step #1: Start sourcing creatively, focusing on quality over quantity
There is definitely a shortage of great developers so getting their attention is hard. The first step you need to take is to start sourcing creatively and focus on quality over quantity. Sending copy-paste emails in bulk makes no sense, developers already get hundreds of these and they all end up in the spam folder.
You need to raise your game, personalize, anticipate their needs, ask them what’s missing in their current position. Treat them as humans. And above all, act like you’re human, too.
Target the right people for the right spot. To do that learn to use GitHub, Stack Overflow, and LinkedIn more efficiently than other recruiters to get better sourcing results. Example? Viewing a developer’s recently asked questions section in Stack Overflow gives you an idea what they’re currently working on without having to ask about it.
Another idea? There’s a way to search Stack Overflow to find users from a specific location and using a skill tag you’re after. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Use this information when approaching the developer so they see that you did your homework. When it comes to sourcing, it’s stand out or die!
Step #2: Start using an automated technical screening platform
The second step is to implement an automated technical screening platform. Why? Your recruitment process needs to be lightning fast and super efficient. Just imagine how you can grow your employer branding and recruitment results by keeping the whole process under a week instead of over a month. Running technical interviews for every single candidate will never let your developers get their real job done. They’ll just be interviewing people all the time, which they most likely don’t like.
Of course, there’s always a catch. In the case of technical screening, the choice of tasks you use is super important! You should use tasks that mirror real work done in your company and allow the candidate to use all the resources they are used to. Developers hate jumping through hoops that make no sense for the job they are applying, but they love solving coding problems that matter.
Step #3: Run online coding interviews
The third step? Run online coding interviews. Developers are busy and scheduling interviews can be a nightmare. Traveling to be interviewed in person is a waste of time for many programmers. Online coding interviews let you see the candidate’s skills in action and they show you how they think. The easier you make it for the candidate, the more likely people are to get engaged.
Step #4: Make timely and fair job offers
The fourth step is to make sure the offer you give is timely and fair. Check tech salary benchmarks and try to be as quick as you can. If you take too long, you risk losing the candidate altogether. Don’t be a cheapskate because that will sacrifice quality.
Step #5: Make your recruitment team more technically aware
The fifth step of the developer hiring formula is to increase the technical awareness of your recruitment team. This will help you understand who are you recruiting and why. The easiest way is to finish our Free Tech Recruitment Certification Course where we go through the nuts and bolts of tech recruitment to get you going. Again, it’s free and you just need to invest your time to go through it. Some recruiters don’t even know the difference between Java 및 자바스크립트. Don’t. Be. Like. That. Period.
Step #6: Eliminate unconscious bias
Step number six: eliminate unconscious bias. You might think you’re not biased, but hey… That’s why it’s called unconscious, right? Diverse teams perform better and are more productive. Anonymized automated technical screening and creating multiple touchpoints are a great start.
Step #7: Nurture your candidates
The final step number 7, show your candidates you care about them by nurturing them throughout the recruitment process. Make the process clear from the beginning so they know exactly what they will go through and how long it will take. Notify them about the status of their application, thank them for taking the time to attend your interview. And most importantly, nobody’s favorite – let them know you’re not going to hire them if that’s your decision.
It’s to hire better tech talent
Now that you have the process, it’s time to start hiring the right developers
- Take our free tech recruitment certification course to become better at sourcing and recruiting developers
- Sign up for a trial on DevSkiller. Start sending out coding tests and perform coding interviews that mirror real work.
