Almost every company from every industry needs tech talent to help keep its business relevant in the digital marketplace. As technology has continued to advance and find its way into every aspect of our daily lives, the demand for those who know how to create, maintain, use and secure this new technology has grown exponentially.
Many younger people are now choosing to enter the technology field. Colleges and universities are filled with technical skill classes and students who take them. Still, the American education system cannot keep up with the demand for tech talent. Currently, there are more job openings in the technology field than there are talented candidates to fill them. This has led to a highly competitive talent marketplace and may have your recruitment manager pulling out their hair while trying to figure out how to attract tech talent.
As the demand for people with technical skills has grown, the importance of tech talent recruitment has grown right along with it. It is no longer enough to post a job and wait for responses. These days, your hiring manager must know where to find tech talent ad how to get those candidates to take an interest in your company.
This article will discuss the fundamentals of tech talent recruitment and the steps you can take to ensure that potential candidates choose your company over the many other options.
Tech Talent Recruitment: How to Hire for Your Tech Roles
There was a time when only tech companies needed to recruit tech talent actively. That is no longer the case, and now, experienced and talented candidates with technical skills are an integral part of almost every workforce. This expansion in demand has not correlated with similar growth in tech talent, increasing the importance of recruitment strategy.
Learning how to recruit tech talent starts by getting a candidate's attention with a compelling job posting and then holding their engagement through the entire hiring process. Here are some critical steps in that journey.
Writing the Perfect Job Description for Your Tech Position
The job description you post, whether it is on a job board, a site like LinkedIn, or an industry recruitment site, is the first and only chance you may have to attract the attention of talented candidates. Every other company looking for candidates with the same skill set will try to attract their attention, so the description you post must stand out from the crowd.
This begins by creating the right title. It needs to be descriptive, contain keywords related to the position, and, if possible, be unique. Sometimes adding descriptive words or phrases to the title can help. Instead of simply posting "Software Engineer" as the job title, consider something like "Software Engineer with Mad Skills" if you're looking to attract a younger candidate and promote your company's relaxed work culture. Or, if you're looking for an older, more experienced candidate, try something like "Senior Software Engineer to Run a Tight Ship."
It's also a good idea to include the specifics of the technology your ideal candidate will be using. A job description like "Software Engineer (C++/Python/Java)" will attract the attention of candidates skilled in those areas and show up in searches that contain those items.
Once you've attracted candidates' attention with your title, it is time to sell your position and company. You need to do much more than describing the position. You need to convince candidates that your opening is the best opportunity for them. You should include some or all of the following in the body of the job description:
- Emphasize new or state-of-the-art technologies to be used by the person who fills the position.
- Talk about the potential for growth within your company.
- Use information gathered from previous employees to highlight the advantages of working for you.
- Talk about the position's importance to the team or the project.
- Be open about all benefits and perks.
- If you have any tech talent on your team that may be well known in the field or that would be a beneficial mentor to newer recruits, mention them by name.
- Include the salary range.
Finding Tech Candidates
Now that you've created the perfect job title, where do you deploy it for maximum results? The answer is anywhere there's a large pool of untapped talent waiting to be hired. In the current era of remote work options, this often includes searching outside the borders of the United States.
Nearshore Developers
Nearshore developers work from outside the United States but are geographically close to it. This would include employees from Canada and Latin America.
The advantages of nearshore developers are many. First, depending on the cost of living in the area they are working from, salaries may be significantly lower. This can be a great way to get the talent you need without breaking the budget. Further savings may be seen if there is a need for company representatives to travel to the home base of their remote employees. It's cheaper and less time-consuming to travel to Latin America than to Asia.
Hiring nearshore candidates also keep problems with time zones to a minimum. Many of the countries in Latin America are located in the same time zones as the continental United States. This means that no one on your team, whether remote or on-site, will ever have to adjust their sleep schedule to be present during regular working hours. It also prevents the seemingly inevitable missed deadlines or meetings due to confusion about the time and date.
The most significant advantage of hiring nearshore developers is the massive pool of talented candidates. Many countries in Latin America have been devoting resources to training tech professionals to be hired by America-based companies. The candidates have been given the skills they need to succeed; they need a way to connect to the companies that need their skills.
Learn More: Recruitment Process Outsourcing: Everything You Should Know
Offshore Developers
Offshore developers, those from countries further away from the company's operations base, also have advantages. Countries in Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe have been providing remote tech talent for many years. These areas offer the advantage of drastically lower salary requirements.
Tapping into the offshore tech talent pool may provide plenty of qualified candidates at lower costs, but the language, time zone, and cultural barriers can be problematic.
Navigating the Interview Process
In a hiring environment where talent is in high demand, and they know it, the interview process is as much about you selling your position and company to the candidate as it is the other way around. The interview process should be geared to finding out what you need to know about the skills and personality of the candidate and allowing them to do the same for your company.
Here are some of the areas your hiring manager should focus their attention on.
Soft Skills
Soft skills can't be taught in a classroom. They are the result of personality, life experiences, and culture. They are also vital to finding the right employee for your company. Soft skills help determine whether the candidate is up to the rigors of the job and whether they will merge into your current team and the workplace environment. Critical soft skills include:
- The ability to communicate effectively both in group settings and one-on-one
- Being a team player
- Being an effective problem-solver
- Ability to manage their time
- Ability to stay organized even when the duties and paperwork pile up
- Ability to manage their stress levels
- Ability to adapt quickly and without complaint
- Ability to handle interpersonal relationships and resolve conflicts
- Ability to think independently and creatively
- Being resourceful
- Being persuasive
- Ability to receive criticism calmly and learn from it
Not all of these soft skills are likely to be present in a single candidate, but that's OK. Before you begin the interview process, determine which soft skills are most important for the position you have to fill and focus on finding candidates that possess them.
Technical Skills
Since you're searching for tech talent, determining whether the interviewee has the technical skills needed to get the job done is paramount. If they do not have the skills or experience to be able to do the job, nothing else they have to offer matters.
If you or your hiring manager do not use the technical skills in question regularly, it would be good to bring in someone who does for this part of the interview. The person experienced in the technology will know what questions to ask and what answers should be given to determine whether a candidate has the technical skills required to do the job.
If this is not an option, or for even more reassurance that the candidate has the necessary skills, testing is a good idea. There are many websites and types of software available that are designed to test the skill levels of tech talent. Having your candidates take these skill tests before the interview process will give you insight into their qualifications and may enable you to narrow the field.
Experience
The amount of time a candidate has worked in the field does not necessarily tell you how much experience they have. A candidate who worked for a short period in a high-stress environment where troubleshooting and multitasking were part of their daily workload may gain more valuable experience than a person who has put in more time but never had their skills put to the test.
You will have access to the candidate's reported length of experience, but take the time to delve further into the details of that experience during the interview. Ask about challenges they may have faced in their previous positions and how they handled them. This will give you valuable insight into both the level of their experience and their ability to address problems when they arise.
Assessments
Assessments give you quantifiable evidence of the expertise of a candidate. These may be in the form of online testing, as mentioned above, or be administered in real-time by employees experienced in the skills you are assessing. For developers and other tech talents, these assessments may include having your current employee give the candidate a task and monitoring their progress as they work to complete it. In other cases, the employee and the candidate can work together on a task with the employee keeping track of how much the candidate is capable of completing without their assistance.
Regardless of how they are administered, assessments give you solid evidence of a candidate's skill levels and some insight into how they handle real-world applications of their skills.
Walking Through Employee Onboarding
Once you have expended all the time and energy to recruit, interview, and hire a new employee, you want to make sure they stick around for a while. A strong onboarding strategy is one of the most effective ways to ensure a long-term relationship between your company and your new hire.
Onboarding is the process of introducing your new employee to the team, your company, and their responsibilities. If done correctly, it results in an employee the quickly becomes comfortable in their new environment and feels that the rest of the team is at their disposal should they have a question or problem. If done incorrectly, you may end up with a new hire that feels out of place and is uncomfortable asking for help. This sets the table for hard feelings, poor work results, and a lack of team cohesion. It may also result in your new hire looking for a new job.
Onboarding should begin before the new hire's first day. Ensuring they have all of their paperwork completed and have been given all needed access before their first day lets them hit the ground running. It is also good to provide them with access to the company's communication network to get a feel for their teammates and ask any relevant questions. Giving them a copy of your handbook allows them to understand the rules before beginning.
On the new hire's first day, they should be assigned a mentor who can answer all of their questions and introduce them to fellow teammates and the job duties. If possible, it is a good idea for a member of upper management to schedule a meeting with the new hire on their first day to welcome them aboard. This will give the employee the sense that they matter as individuals and open communication lines.
Shortly after they start, you should schedule a group meeting with all pertinent team members. During this meeting, the members should take the time to introduce themselves, their roles, and how the new hire's duties affect their work. This gives the new hire a good idea of their importance to the team, and it also lets them know who to go to if they have questions about specific areas of the pipeline.
Once the new hire has been introduced to their mentor, management, and the rest of the team, onboarding is incomplete. Regular check-ins must be done over the next few weeks or months to ensure that the new hire is adapting well and feeling productive and vital to the team.
Effective Recruiting Strategies to Help Build Your Talent Pool
The larger the pool of candidates you have to choose from, the better the chances you will find just the right tech talent to meet your specific needs. There are a few steps you can take to increase the size of your talent pool.
- Ask for referrals — Nobody recognizes tech talent better than those who work in the field. Ask your current technology employees to refer people who have the skills you need
- Contact the talent yourself — Instead of passively waiting for the suitable candidates to find you, use tech talent-hiring boards or networking sites like LinkedIn to find the talent you need and reach out to them.
- Make a name for yourself, your employees, or your company — Be involved in work that attracts attention and share your successes on social media or other public outlets.
- Highlight the benefits of working for your company — This may include a press release about your company's generous leave policy or flooding social media with images of your company's latest team-building adventures.
How to Attract Ideal Potential Talent in Tech Industries
Attracting the right potential talent starts with knowing exactly what skills you need from the talent, both soft and hard. Once you have established that, follow the steps above and focus on the specifics of your needs.
Knowing where to emphasize your recruiting efforts will save you time and energy while still increasing your chances of attracting the ideal candidate.
Learn More: How to Hire Unreal Engine Developers
Recruit the Best Software Developers for Your Business
If reading through this article has you shaking your head and saying, "there has got to be an easier way to handle tech talent recruitment," you are in luck. There is an easier way to find, recruit, and hire software engineers, contact Revelo.
Revelo is a talent platform that specializes in matching nearshore technical talent from Latin America with the American-based companies that need their services. Once you present them with your job description, they will find and recruit tech professionals that match the skills required and the culture of your company.
Once you have chosen a candidate from the pre-vetted options they present you with, Revelo continues its service to you by handling the entire hiring experience. They manage the HR side of everything, including payroll, benefits, and ensuring compliance with all local regulations. All you have to do is begin the onboarding process.
To find out more about how Revelo can answer the question, "How to hire tech talent?" for you or to get started finding the best candidates to fill your tech positions, visit the hire page today.
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