Finding and hiring recruiters can be just as overwhelming as finding the developers themselves, or any type of employee for that matter. Usually, these processes take time and a lot of research – and of course – they can be costly too.
Planning a workforce is a challenging task for any business owner, and with improper execution of assembling a team during the recruitment process, things might go south quickly. Hence, conducting the whole hiring process meticulously is essential because the tech recruiter will be responsible for finding and recommending quality developers to hire.
When you browse through various platforms, you indeed notice that there are many recruiters actively looking for a job, and the hard part would be to filter out precisely the specific industry they belong in. Hiring developers and IT professionals are tricky. You’ll need a tech recruiter who knows exactly what to do when presented with the notion of ‘tech talent hunting’, including knowing the right places to find the best developers for your business.
Once you find a good tech recruiter, you can rest assured that from now on, the developer talent hunting process will go much easier, and you’ll always get the best developers. But, first thing’s first, you need an excellent tech recruiter for that to happen. Let’s find out where you can find and hire them.
What is a tech recruiter?
A tech recruiter, or technical recruiter, is a talent acquisition specialist responsible for sourcing, researching, and interviewing IT specialists, web developers, and engineers. They also onboard new tech employees and can even take on responsibilities that are done by those in human resources as well.
This type of recruiter has substantial knowledge of what a tech role encompasses, and they have at least two years of experience in the tech industry.
How to start and search for a tech recruiter?
As with most things, starting is the most challenging part. Once you have a clear vision and know how to plan out the research and execute this process, the following segments fall into place.
You will need to assemble a checklist containing tech and job platforms, competitors and their best practices, staffing agencies, and even consider the option to post a job ad where you clearly state that you need to hire a tech recruiter.
Research various (tech) job boards
Freely browse through the most popular (or busiest) job platforms to get a hint of precisely what you need. For example, you cannot go wrong browsing through LinkedIn, where new job ads are constantly popping up, countless recruiters are looking for new talent, and many networking novelties and opportunities present themselves daily. Linkedin, as a platform, is an excellent way to connect with like-minded professionals, including professionals from a wide array of fields. LinkedIn is also great for broadening your professional network and potentially finding a new hire.
Another great example of handling and offering tech services is Proxify, where both development services and recruitment are combined. We have outstanding quality in the teams of talent acquisition specialists and hiring managers and work with a large base of developers with various skills and work experiences. Because we nurture a large base of software developers with excellent knowledge, experience, and expertise, we are confident to say that our technical recruiters are doing something right without mishandling time or resources.
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You might be surprised once you comb through your professional network for relevant contacts. This is because you might find an already established recruitment company or someone with experience in tech recruiting and talent acquisition.
It doesn’t bring any harm to check thoroughly between all your professional contacts and the mutual connections you share with them too. As you browse all profiles, some suggested and related profiles of a tech recruiter might also appear.
Research the competitors to have a clearer perspective of your search
Some recruitment strategies involve more in-depth research than initially intended. Why limit your search to your professional network only when you can check out what competitors do well too?
If you get the chance, check out their best practices, how they hire and retain, and even more importantly, how they recruit recruiters. Additionally, you can explore their tech recruitment sector (and profiles) for more valuable information you can use later. This can serve as a more precise strategy for your own tech recruiter ‘hunt’.
Browse through staffing agencies
If you avoid directly searching for job seekers through the talent pool, you can now get in touch with staffing agencies. Of course, they have specializations for specific areas, and finding a tech recruiter for your business won’t be too complex. Be as precise as possible, whether you seek a junior, mid, or senior-level recruiter, what exact tech and IT knowledge they should have, and similar.
Post a job ad for hiring tech recruiters
You can see how many open positions there are on job boards that specify filling out the role of a tech recruiter and direct your search according to them. It is a great way to find the right recruiter because it shortens the long searching process.
Those that encounter the job ad you’ll post will likely be predominantly well-qualified candidates, but you can later filter out the applications and hire the best tech recruiter for your needs.
So, to find tech recruiters that are the right fit for your company, it’s crucial to write the job description as precisely as possible. Make sure to mention and describe the following in the job add as minimum bullet points to include:
- Job title – Be precise, and instead of just writing ‘recruiter’, say ‘tech recruiter’, ‘IT recruiter’, and similar. Mention the employment type, whether it is a full-time or part-time, or on-demand and task-based role, and similar.
- A summary of the job – Go straight to the point when you describe what the tech recruiter will do and what prior experience is required or preferred for this job.
- Skills and competencies – Depending on the specific industry branch of your company, you can narrow down the needed skills and competencies for the tech recruiter you seek. But, in general, there are default skills to tick off for this job position, such as proficiency in MS Office, internet search and database management, knowledge in HR software and databases, and more.
- Responsibilities and tasks – Mention how it is expected to collaborate and communicate with hiring managers frequently, conduct the screening interviews, and more.
- Salary – It is good to include the precise salary you’d offer in the tech recruiter position ad because you’ll receive applications from candidates that are fine with accepting the offered salary. Otherwise, not mentioning the salary in the ad would result in a bunch of applications from candidates that could back down later on.
- Perks and benefits – Mention all the rest apart from the salary, such as vacation days, additional benefits, insurance, any other relevant factors included in the job, etc.
How would you assess the tech recruiter?
As part of the interview, you’ll need to assess the tech recruiter. The main factors to check are their critical thinking, communication skills, previous tech recruiting experience, and engagement with candidates.
Some examples of (in-depth) questions to consider
- Which tech communities are you a part of?
(Here the possible answers could be) LinkedIn, Recruitment Slackers, Recruiting Brainfood, Sources Who Code, Boolean strings, SourceCon, Secret Sourcing Group, Tech Hiring Community Europe, Sourcers Unleashed, and more.
- What tech roles are the most difficult to fill? And the easiest ones?
The most difficult to fill (or require the most time and resources, around 40 days more or less) are software developer/engineer, IT project manager, product manager, network engineer, cybersecurity engineer, and computer systems engineer.
Those that are easiest to fill and in a relatively shorter time are quality assurance, IT help desk, cloud infrastructure developer, and computer support specialist, among others.
- How do you prepare and structure the technical interview?
The interview has to start with an introductory part and a brief description of past work experiences from the candidate. Then, an in-depth description of the job and what will be required. After that, follow some more technical questions for the candidate's skills and check if they are a good fit—self-assessment, technical quiz, and coding tasks.
- What skills and qualifications make someone immediately employable (besides superb expertise in their tech field)?
Regarding the specific technical skills that make someone highly employable, it would depend on the job position that needs to be filled. For example, if we need to hire a Flutter developer, we would emphasize strong experience with Git, SQL, GoF patterns, Swift, and Kotlin, among other things.
Other factors influencing employability are the years of previous experience, the type of companies mentioned in the resumé, and the developer's presentability and communication skills during the interview.
- How do you start writing a job description for tech job positions?
Trying to be concise and precisely show information is a good start. Of course, the standard structure of a job title, a summary for the job position, the needed skills and expected responsibilities, the salary range, and perks or benefits (if any).
Depending on the skills or exact tech role we need, the job ad is customized, and specific information is mentioned accordingly.
The takeaway
It is not too complex to find and hire the tech recruiting experts you need, given that you do proper research and engagement in all the relevant ways, as mentioned above. Finding the right tech recruiter will help you with the company's employment processes and will also help you find and retain the hired developers for longer.
When you genuinely want to find (and hire) only the best of all experts in the field, you are investing in your company’s future and building a stellar employer branding simultaneously.
