The growing digital economy has created a massive demand for technical roles and made it difficult for companies to fill open positions. While one might be quick to point to a shortage of talent as the cause, this only makes up for one factor of the problem.

The other less obvious factor is the poor technical hiring process in sourcing for tech talent, which is a huge obstacle to companies looking to fill their open positions quickly with qualified candidates.

There are two ways to recruit technical talent: the traditional way, and the smart way. The traditional way tends to be time, energy, and resource-intensive. On the other hand, the smart way will make your hiring process faster, simpler, and more efficient.

It is imperative for recruiters, in-house talent teams, and organisations to improve their recruitment practices and strategy the “smart way,” in order to access a larger pool of candidates and increase their chances of finding a perfect match for the job.

Here are the top six ways that hiring managers, recruiters, and talent teams can attract and source for talent in the best and quickest possible manner.

1. Know Where to Look for Tech Candidates

Most ideal technical candidates are passive job seekers, meaning that they are not actively looking for opportunities on job boards. However, they would still consider a good job opportunity that comes their way.

So, where can these passive candidates be found?

The Traditional Way:

One of the most preferred ways is to look for candidates on LinkedIn, but you will not be able to find every developer there. Hence, you should also search across other tech communities where techies are likely to spend their time.

These tech communities include platforms such as GitHub, tech community forums like Stack Overflow, local technical conferences or events such as hackathons, and talent marketplaces to name a few.

The Smart Way:

Digital recruitment tools can help you efficiently and quickly find candidates in every nook and cranny. They will help automate repetitive and time-intensive tasks so that you can focus on providing a positive candidate experience.

HackerTrail’s Scout uses AI-powered recruitment technology to source top technical talent for you in under a minute, cutting down on your sourcing time by half. Integrating tools like Scout into your workflow can help streamline your entire recruitment process and save you a lot of time and energy spent on administrative and manual tasks.

2. Screen Tech Talent More Efficiently

You know where to look for candidates, but how do you analyse which ones are best suited for your job requirements? You can either go the long route and shortlist candidates manually, wasting a significant amount of time in the process, or use an AI recruitment tool to consider top talent faster and more efficiently.

The Traditional Way:

Resumes are a way for candidates to showcase their skills, experience and abilities to potential employers. Thus, to find the top tech talent, you need to pour through each candidate’s resume manually and match them to your job requirements.

The Smart Way:

AI-based recruiting technologies today give recruiters the ability to parse resumes, automate data extraction, and filter the applicants based on their profile’s relevance for the role. By automating the screening part of the recruitment process, this frees up more time for recruitment teams as they will not have to do this manually.

3. Create Realistic And Discoverable Job Descriptions

To attract top software professionals, you need to perfect your technical job descriptions.

Keep in mind that your job seeker is technically savvy, and as such, your job description (JD) should effectively clearly communicate the role’s responsibilities, and set clear and realistic expectations about the role.

These job seekers will search for jobs using specific targeted keywords. Hence, you will also have to conduct some keyword research and include those targeted keywords in your JDs in order to attract a higher number of relevant candidates.

The Traditional Way:

HR personnel start by gathering all the technical information you need regarding the job. If you do not have the required technical knowledge, you can ask a person with the technical knowledge to help draft relevant JDs.

At the same time, in order to optimise your JD to attract the most number of relevant candidates possible, it is advised to gain some Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) help with regards to the high volume and targeted keywords that job seekers are using. Put together, all of this can be a time consuming effort just to ensure that your JD is clear, relevant, and optimised for a pool of candidates. If you lack the time or resources to go through that hassle, take a look at the smart alternative below.

The Smart Way:

To save on the time and energy required to optimise your job postings, you can gain a lot of help and support from a specialist technical recruitment agency instead. They will help you create client-focused JDs for software engineers and all sorts of technical roles that will allow you to fill your open positions quickly.

A technical recruitment agency that leverages AI to build personalised and specific job descriptions that mention the technical requirements of the position can help you find more qualified and strong candidates.

4. Provide Candidates With Engaging Assessments and Challenges

Every developer loves challenges as it allows them to showcase their skills. For recruiters, it is a chance for them to assess a candidate’s true capabilities.

However, creating assessments and challenges can be tricky especially if you lack the technical knowledge to do so. If you use a problem that is widely known and the solution is available online, not every candidate will solve it honestly and the assessment will not be an accurate measure of a candidate’s abilities. Moreover, it may not provide a good experience to top developers applying for the role.

Here are how coding challenges are set up for interviews:

The Traditional Way:

The technical hiring team creates an assessment or coding challenge that mirrors the work that needs to be done on the job. They should focus on actual business problems and use a diverse set of questions.

The technical hiring team should also avoid using generic questions and also decide on a grading or scoring method.

The Smart Way:

Recruitment technology assessment software can help you assess candidates for a wide range of skills, without the hiring team having to worry about instances of cheating or having to spend time coming up with a curated set of problems from scratch.

For example, Litmus helps create assessments for more than 150 tech skills, including code challenges, multiple choice questions, and scenario-based questions. You can customise your assessment and add a personal touch to them. It also prevents cheating through real-time plagiarism checks, always-on webcam requirements, and additional security features.

5. Communicate Effectively to Build Trust

Technology professionals can identify if a recruiter does not know what they are talking about. Having a tech-savvy recruitment team is crucial, else the candidates will have a negative impression of your company and look for a job elsewhere.

The Traditional Way:

Recruiters need to be familiar with the technology stack and engineering team structure within the organisation. This will help them connect with and retain the right candidates for the job.

Therefore, upskilling recruiters by having them gain more domain knowledge in this area allows them to communicate effectively with job-seeking techies. They should understand common technical terminology, jargon, and basic questions related to the role they are hiring for.

The Smart Way:

The best and smart approach is to leverage the expertise of a technical recruitment agency. Taking care of the initial screening of candidates, they can provide you with a good pool of pre-qualified candidates that fit the job requirements.

Here is a list of the top technical recruitment agencies in Singapore that may be of use to your hiring needs. A specialised technology recruitment agency will connect you with the candidates who are the best fit for the role and your company, allowing you to hire only the strongest talent for your organisation.

6. Utilise Your Employee Network for Referrals

Employee referral is a recruiting technique that asks internal employees to refer other suitable candidates within their network to apply for open roles at the company. It is one of the greatest sources of finding prospective candidates.

The Traditional Way:

Broadcast the need for referrals to your employees through your company’s internal communication system. To attract more employees to participate, provide them with benefits such as a cash incentive for each successful referral.

Also, employees who love their jobs will naturally promote the brand and further invite more talent to the company. As such, it is important to ensure good welfare for employees so that they can speak highly of the organisation, thereby strengthening the organisation's brand.

The Smart Way:

Let an AI-powered search engine find qualified candidates for you. Such AI-based technologies enable recruiters and hiring managers to identify top technical talent faster than conventional sourcing techniques. You can use straightforward search queries to find relevant profiles, resumes, experience, and the online presence of hundreds of individuals.

Scout is an AI-powered search engine that can help you source for candidates across the web according to your job descriptions and additional filters. Based on the relevance of the profiles, it ranks the recommended profiles based on how suitable they are for the role you are filling, making your talent sourcing even easier and faster.

Conclusion

With technology being the way of the future, the need for technical talent is increasing every day. Every company wants to hire the best candidate for the role, but amidst this competition, recruitment technology can become your secret advantage to help you source, screen and hire the most suitable software professionals.

If you prefer to have the hassle of technical recruitment taken off your hands, engaging the support of a technical recruitment agency can be of great help. Contact us now and we will help you find the finest tech talent in a short time.

Backend Technology Interview Questions

1. Know Where to Look for Tech Candidates

So, where can these passive candidates be found?

The Traditional Way:

The Smart Way:

2. Screen Tech Talent More Efficiently

The Traditional Way:

The Smart Way:

3. Create Realistic And Discoverable Job Descriptions

The Traditional Way:

The Smart Way:

4. Provide Candidates With Engaging Assessments and Challenges

Here are how coding challenges are set up for interviews:

The Traditional Way:

The Smart Way:

5. Communicate Effectively to Build Trust

The Traditional Way:

The Smart Way:

6. Utilise Your Employee Network for Referrals

The Traditional Way:

The Smart Way:

Conclusion

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