Finding Tech Pros
Regardless of what role you are recruiting for, or which SaaS recruitment agency in Dublin you use, you must ensure your recruiter’s candidate approaches are highly personalised and correctly targeted.
If you want to find tech pros, you need to think like a tech pro. Their definition of a professional network is somewhere like Github, Stack Overflow, Dribble or Behance. This is where you’ll discover who they are, what they’re working on and the skills they have. You won’t discover this information on LinkedIn alone.
Build Your Brand
The fight for talent is real for companies of all sizes, ranging from start-ups to the Fortune 500. People are eager to work for businesses with a clearly defined purpose, and building a strong brand image is extremely important for start-ups as they have to compete with tech giants with deeper pockets.
Take your time and focus on your image and culture by creating and sharing quality content. It can be thought leadership (on Medium, Substack, etc.), open-source libraries, a meetup, hackathons, or anything else that can capture software engineers’ attention and help them understand your mission. Attending other companies’ public events and hackathons is another opportunity you shouldn’t miss out on.
The goal is to attract people who are interested in your industry, idea or product and, even more important, who believe in YOU. You’ll never have enough time to make everyone an expert in your field, but there’s always an opportunity to leave people with the impression: “I would love to work with her/him.” A positive brand image sinks deep into the mind and works great for both potential and current employees, not to mention clients.
Define Your Process
- Outreach: Who will handle initial outreach to candidates? Will you use an in-house recruiter, an external recruiter or just a designated team member?
- Sources: If you are recruiting in-house, what mediums would you like to use? This will differ country-by-country – for example, in the U.S. two good sources tend to be LinkedIn and AngelList.
- Interview Process: What will the typical process be? We typically suggest the following, which is an efficient process for both the company and candidate: (1) Initial screening call with HR, (2) Initial fit interview with founders or product owners, (3) At least 1-2 technical interviews. For junior candidates, it can also be helpful to include a coding “pre-test” before step (2) to filter the top candidates (for senior candidates, it’s typically better to handle this during the technical interviews.
- Offer Process: Who is the final decision maker? Is it a democracy where everyone votes, or does one person have the final say? What is your “bar” for a positive answer?
The common mistake here is not having a clear understanding of how many people should be involved in interviewing and what they need to ask. For instance, there is a “sponge” approach when you have multiple employees shooting questions at the candidate over several meetings. While it’s great that you can collect many opinions, the absence of a systematic approach can result in false impressions. To avoid confusion, set up clear expectations for the position, then select the interviewers who can evaluate both the hard and soft skills of candidates. The best interviewer is often the person who will work with your candidate directly in the future. Go through their questions and then get the feedback as soon as the interview is over.
It’s also important to remember that, while you’re interviewing the candidate, they’re interviewing you as well. This is often more subtle, but they’re trying to understand if this is a company they would enjoy working for, what they will be able to learn from the senior team members and what their opportunities will be. We suggest incorporating that into your process based on the type of person you’re looking for (for example, for a highly technical role, focus on highly technical interviews with very strong engineers, rather than high-level business questions).
Reach Out Directly
In terms of recruiting channels, posting a job on LinkedIn and other recruitment platforms is essential but not enough. Only active job seekers look at job postings, and the best talent, as a general rule, is already taken. Make sure to get in front of developers through advertising your job posts, working through your network and reaching out directly. It takes a lot of time but it’s also the best way to attract the best talent.
To get more attention, make sure that your job posting sounds personal. Introducing the company’s vision in a job description will help you stand out from other employers. However, try not to get carried away. Roles and responsibilities should be clearly defined.
Think Globally
Thinking globally as opposed to locally is another thing to consider. If you stop treating geography as an obstacle, you’ll gain an advantage in the talent war by accessing a much larger pool of world-class professionals.
For instance, Belarus has become one of the best hubs for engineering talent because of the excellent combination of high quality, lower cost and strong culture fit with US and European companies. Building an offshore team of experienced software developers here is much cheaper than establishing an engineering centre in Dublin. You could build dedicated software development teams of highly-talented developers, for ~70% lower cost than in-house hiring. Engaging the right recruitment partner who understands your organisation and how to help it grow through a remote workforce will help you to ensure you recruit and retain the top developers.