Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two decades, you are very aware of just how fast the technology industry has grown. With all this innovation and demand, it’s a seller’s market for tech professionals.
It’s exceedingly difficult and costly to find, evaluate and retain top tech talent for any meaningful length of time. Smart, savvy, and up-to-date recruitment efforts are the only way to go.
Are you best equipped to face today’s tech hiring challenges? Or is your tech recruitment process gathering dust?
Ask yourself if the following statements are true or false.
Recruitment and Marketing have nothing in common
True or false? False!
“Recruitment IS Marketing. If you’re a recruiter nowadays and don’t see yourself as a marketer, you’re in the wrong profession.” – Matthew Jeffrey, Global Head of Sourcing and Employment Brand for SAP
The next time you’re looking to fill a position, take a marketing stance and consider the vacancy as an opportunity to explore marketing techniques and reach a target audience (potential candidates!).
Where does the best talent live? What are your common interests and points of intersection? How should you target them? Market-savvy recruiters turn to data to help them find the answers to these questions, and then employ marketing tactics to attract the ideal candidates.
Technical tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights can prove extremely helpful. Google Analytics, for example, can be used to analyze job seekers’ behaviour on your career site. You can also track how candidates find you (be it from social media, emailing campaigns, referrals, etc.). Google Analytics can also be used to identify the top keywords potential candidates use when searching for job vacancies online. You can make sure to build these keywords into job descriptions and strategically place advertisements, so as to attract a wider talent pool.
DIY is the only way to go
True or false? False!
If you want things done right, you do them yourself. Right?
No! If you’re not automating the more menial and repetitive recruitment tasks, you’re wasting valuable time and human resources. You can use technology and Artificial Intelligence to speed up recruitment by automating manual CV screening, existing candidate database searches, external database screenings, standard candidate query responses, technical assessment campaigns, social media interactions, etc.
By automating what you can, you free up time and energy for the tasks you bring real, human, value to.
Developers don’t care about culture
True or false? False!
Tech candidates want to join companies with a soul! In fact, programmers pay special attention to company culture. Our 2019 Developer Survey revealed that close to one in three developers would decline a job offer if the company culture didn’t match their personal values.
It’s no longer acceptable to simply publish standard job offers, presenting no insights into what it’s like to be part of your tech team. Let developers in. Give candidates a real idea of your company culture. Help them picture what working for your company looks like. Videos, articles and photos are all great ways to feed programmers’ imagination.
A CV doesn’t tell you the whole story
True or false? True!
Sifting through applications and trusting that you’ve selected the best candidate for a role is difficult.
Tech teams are well aware of this challenge. Indeed, close to half of developers (46.9%) believe that “Determining if candidates have the right skills before interviewing them” is the main challenge companies encounter when recruiting developers.
You can’t rely on a CV to evaluate and compare actual technical skills. To measure and assess candidates on specific IT skillsets and programming knowledge tech recruiters are turning to dedicated online testing platforms.
Ensure that your efforts are customizable to allow for testing that suits the exact blend of knowledge and ability necessary for any given position. Guarantee adaptability so that you’re able to accurately assess skills and aptitudes. Reduce bias in recruiting. Build solid and talented tech teams.
An interview is an interview
True or false? False!
An interview is not just an interview. The interview is a crucial part of the recruitment process. Make sure you pay particular attention to adjusting and improving the process.
“Irrelevant interview questions and exercises” and “HR professionals who don’t understand tech” is what developers say annoys them most about the recruitment process – so much so that they’d give up and choose another company!
To avoid conducting outdated interviews and asking embarrassing questions, why not include your current tech team in the process? Despite the fact that the vast majority of developers (90.3%) who are included in their company’s tech recruitment are happy to be part of the process, over half of hiring companies (53.1%) try to get by recruiting developers without the help of their tech team.
If you’ve got these areas covered, chances are you’re well on your way to a state-of-the-art tech recruiting process. If not, you’ve plenty of food for thought. Your tech recruiting process is an ongoing project, stay on your toes!
