The tech hiring field is highly competitive – both for candidates and recruiters. While candidates for junior positions are putting in work to get recognized and make their mark in the industry, recruiters are fiercely competing for qualified talent. In fact, research shows that 86% of employers are struggling to find and hire tech talent. As a result, their current employees can suffer more pressure, their product development is obstructed, and they can even lose revenue. Recruitment in the tech industry can be a complicated process, but here are the best tech recruitment tactics that can help you attract the best talent.

Be transparent about the position

To attract premium talent, you have to be as straightforward about the position as possible. Senior developers won’t be interested in investing their time to apply for a position whose description lacks vital information.
Unfortunately for many recruiters, one of the most vital pieces of information is the expected salary. The Developer Insights survey found that developers find a compensation estimate the most important part of a recruiter’s email. So, if you’re looking for a way to stand out and attract key hires, mentioning the compensation range is a good place to start.
Other things you should mention when reaching out include important information about your company and the reason why you think the candidate might be a good fit for the position.

Work on your culture

Money may be a great incentive, but some candidates might find that their work environment and colleagues are the most important factors when it comes to choosing their next employer. If you offer the same (or similar) compensation to a candidate as one of your competitors, chances are he/she will make their decision based on your values and culture.
This doesn’t just mean offering great benefits. Having a brand new PlayStation and snacks in the “chill out” zone is becoming pretty much an industry standard. You need to offer something new and show that it’s ingrained deep in your company culture.
Education and training are things the tech community deeply cares about, as well as they define product enablement process in every tech company, so think in that direction. And, once you start working on this, you’ll notice that your retention rates might go up as well!

Communicate the tech stack early

This is just good practice, but so many companies miss out on this part and their ads end up getting ignored by valuable candidates. This goes with something we mentioned earlier – senior developers won’t waste time applying to an incomplete ad. They might even discard your company as frivolous and unworthy of their attention.
Consult your engineers and be as direct as possible about the tech stack the team is working with. Make sure you communicate it to the candidates as soon as possible: in the ad copy or initial email.
This will not only give the candidates a good idea of whether or not they should apply, but it will work great for you as well! It will attract the best possible candidates that feel confident about working in your environment.

Make the testing process simple and effective

Coding tests are often a subject of debate in the tech industry, with infamous whiteboard tests garnering a lot of attention. Assessing someone’s coding skills accurately is never that easy, so multiple ways of doing this have been invented over the years.
However, giving your candidate a good coding test is very much expected in today’s industry, as it’s one of the best ways to check their problem-solving skills. To make sure your tests are optimized to do what they’re set up to do, here are some tips:

  • Send the test at the beginning of the week so the candidate has enough time;
  • Make sure the test is relevant to the work your candidate will do on the job;
  • The test should always be objective and standardized, with no room for interpretation;
  • You should strive to make the tests gradable with scores from 1 to 10, not on a “fail-pass” basis

Explore new opportunities

Most tech employers have their primary pool of candidates – it usually includes competitor companies or companies that work with similar technologies.
But, venturing out of your comfort zone can pay dividends if you invest effort into finding the best candidates in places you wouldn’t usually look. This can mean both crossing your country or city border and exploring demographics you aren’t that familiar with.
For example, Microsoft has a special program for people with disabilities. While this certainly inspires and does good for the community, it also puts the company in a position to find the most talented people from a specific demographic.

Leverage referrals

Finally, we get to a tactic that many tech companies use to source the best talent – referrals.
For your referral strategy to work, you should make sure the process is set up in such a way to make it as easy as possible for your employees to recommend someone. More than that, you should find a way to keep your people in the loop about the latest open positions at any given time.
A great way to do this is to include referral conversations into weekly/daily meetings. This is an especially important habit to instill in your engineers, as their referrals will often return the best candidates.

Final word

Recruitment in tech is different from recruitment in other industries, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossibly hard. All you need to do is educate your employees and set up slightly smarter processes that will make the experience more convenient for your candidates, but more efficient for you. After that, it’s only a matter of working on your company image and attracting the best possible people for the role.
Try some of these best tech recruitment tactics and let us know if you get better results in your hiring endeavors!

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