As a recruiter, hiring tech talent comes with its own set of challenges. With remote work becoming easy to set up and manage, recruiters can be their ideal tech guy with fewer barriers.
Before diving into the winning tips to recruit the best talents in the market, let us lay out a few but expensive mistakes you could avoid when looking for tech talent in specific.
Steer Clear of These Mistakes When Hiring Tech Talent
The innocent HR invites several challenges into their drawing-room when hiring tech talent, particularly when poorly making hiring plans.
Here are a few mistakes you could avoid.
1. Not having a recruitment strategy in place
A poorly planned recruitment process leads to poor candidate experience. Nothing dampens the spirits of a motivated talent enthralled at the prospect of being called into your company than an unorganized candidate interview.
You see, the problem for recruiters in hiring tech talent is not the lack of talent. It is the lack of specific skills that cater to the technological requirements of the company. Moreover, with surplus jobs in the offing, candidates are simply spoilt for choice.
A recruiter must clearly plan the entire process of hiring a tech guy so that the latter can experience the credibility of your company. A good hiring experience can also increase the chances of hiring by three times.
2. Avoid old methods of evaluation like these
Several recruiters are no more fans of fancy college degrees when recruiting tech talent. Employers simply do not find college degrees to cater to the expectations of the rapidly shifting trends in the industry.
On the other hand, online certifications which are continuously updated according to industry standards are preferred.
Hence, fawning over resumes from graduates of blue-blooded institutions need not necessarily guarantee good candidates.
Instead, you could look at the portfolio of these developers. Check out their activities on platforms such as Github and Stackoverflow – these are communities where developers can publish their code and can ask and answer technical questions.
3. Avoid a rookie mistake — using unclear job descriptions
An attractive job description isn’t the one that has a TV series-esque job title and description. The odd words in the job title and within the description can baffle the onlooker – the techie you want to recruit.
This leads to candidates not recognizing the job titles altogether.
Sometimes, new job titles are created to fill in intermediate roles in a staunchly hierarchical organization. These job titles should aptly resonate with the expectations of the candidate.
4. Not Optimizing Job Ads for Different Devices
Do you think candidates look for job postings on their laptop screen? Think again.
According to HR Digital Tech, 90% of job seekers use their mobile devices to search for jobs, and 89% of those believe mobile compatibility is crucial to how the job search is done.
A job description that is not skimmable is a lost cause these days. A job description optimized for mobile should have keywords that concisely describe the job in the front.
5. Avoid falling for biases
Recruiters often fall for their personal and professional biases when recruiting tech talent. For instance, they assume the personal goals and motivations of their candidate. This bit the company’s heels in various ways.
Always ask the candidates their motivations behind applying for the role. Explore their attitudes and motivations and make sure they align with the pace of your company.
6. Lack of salary information
The median computer programmer salary in the US is more than $100K a year, which in some states is two times larger than the average regional pay. This is not a simple coincidence, but a correlation.
Salaries for tech jobs in the USA are higher because the availability of talent is always lesser than the number of vacant job roles.
Tips to Firmly Build a Tech Team
Now that we have addressed the key mistakes in hiring tech talent, here are a few tips for recruiting tech specialists.
Invest in technology
Candidates for technological roles look for the tech friendliness of the companies they wish to work for. The reason for this course of action can be anything philosophical or purely based on self-interests.
Candidates with tech talent are obviously tech aficionados. They need to know that your company is open to investing in technology, and the employers are culturally encouraged to adopt technology to make their lives easier.
Moreover, tech workers are more cognizant of security than non-tech workers. Hence, investing in technology to adopt the highest standards in security increases candidates’ experience.
For tech workers, outdated technology is a big turn-off- it impacts their morale and productivity. Hence investing in technology should be a key part of your tech recruiting strategy.
Be more comfortable in engaging with tech-based communities
The tech scene is simply exploding around the world. More and more developers are joining the band of open source developers who are always driven by extrinsic motivations in contributing to communities such as Github and Stackoverflow. Moreover, there are always webinars and online conferences happening at almost any time in the world.
Attending these webinars and tech conferences would make a vast difference to your tech recruitment strategy.
However, you could be more aggressive.
Try sponsoring these webinars. Branding these webinars by funding them would help you leave a lasting impression in the minds of the candidates. Moreover, you could also gain control over the content of the webinar, the placement of your brand.
If sponsoring is too posh for your recruiting strategy, then network a lot and fast. You could participate in clubs and rooms on Clubhouse. Candidates are always sharing tips and advice with each other there.
You could hence, establish your presence in spaces like these to tap into these passive candidates.
Design a Smart & Modern Recruitment Strategy
Apart from being extremely tech-savvy, hiring tech talent these days requires a detailed analysis of data. A recruiting strategy that specifically caters to hiring tech candidates should be a data-driven one.
Over the past 20 years, the area of marketing saw great innovation in algorithms that changed marketing and advertising from being a stare-into-empty-space-and-get-inspiration activity to a data-driven one. Over the past few years, HR is an area that has been heavily impacted by algorithms and automation.
There are several HR management tools that assess a vast pool of data to enhance the entire hiring experience. By using innovative algorithms, you can process data streams to identify Goliath Esque strengths and glaring gaps of each candidate at a faster pace.
Use employer branding as a key part of your hiring tech talent strategy
Do you have a marketing team with a copywriter and a digital marketer? You could use their skills in:
- Building your employer brand
- Writing clear and convincing job descriptions
- Crafting intriguing job ads
- Optimizing the word choices for your job description
- Handle social media content – posting reels, behind-the-scenes, celebratory photos
9 out 10 candidates would be interested in applying for jobs where a strong employer brand is maintained. Similar to attracting new customers, clients, and followers for your brand, you could use your marketing channels to build perceptions as a progressive, emphatic and inclusive employer.
A Careerarc survey revealed that 96% of companies believe employer brand can have an impact on your overall business goals. Popular, higher-profile brands automatically get more interest than competitors when they start a hiring initiative. By advertising your business in the local area, you can create a higher profile that will attract more applicants out of your local talent pool.
Don’t Be Limited By Geographical Borders
Geographical borders aren’t barriers anymore. It is short-sightedness on the part of recruiters to not embrace the idea of hiring across talent.
Post the pandemic, remote work shall become all the rage. Companies can shun away their brick and mortar infrastructures. Project management tools can help in asynchronous employee management. Additionally, employees aren’t that big on the idea of returning to offices; 1 in 2 employees don’t want jobs offering remote work.
Thus, take advantage of this remote work revolution to build workers from around the world.
By casting a wider net when you look for candidates, you can hire employees from emerging markets where the cost to the company is cheaper. Developed countries have a huge number of vacancies. However, with the yawning gulf between supply and demand, salaries are high too.
Emerging countries, on the other hand, have candidates who expect salaries way lesser than workers in developed countries. With the possibility of efficiently carrying out work remotely, recruiters can reap several benefits for their company, primarily stalwart talent at affordable salaries.
How Can Multiplier Help With Hiring Tech Talent
Multiplier’s SaaS-based PEO and EOR solution enables you to stay compliant when hiring across international borders. Candidates with rich technological skill sets are easy to find when you have a global outlook in recruitment.
If you are looking for a comprehensive guide on global talent acquisition, then check out this post.
However, if you are beyond all that and are convinced about the benefits of global talent acquisition, then you could use Multiplier’s EOR solution to cast a wider net when hiring tech talent. Once you hire your ideal tech geek from an overseas market, you could use our 150+ local entities to employ them on our payroll while you manage their day-to-day affairs.
Book a call with us to guide you through your tech talent acquisition.
