Technical Recruiting: Tips for Hiring Tech Talents

If you’re an HR executive and part of your KPI involves finding and hiring high quality candidates for your company’s tech position, this is the right place to start. Here at Talentport, we are going to give you some tips for technical hiring, to recruit that long awaited software engineer, UI/UX designer and data analyst personnel.

The above-mentioned positions are always in high demand, yet the talent pool is highly limited. With the right approach, tips and strategies, you’ll learn that it’s not impossible to get ahead of the pack and attract them.

What is Technical Recruiting

Technical recruiting, or technical hiring is the process of finding, attracting, and hiring technical talents such as IT professionals, engineers, data scientists, developers etc. to fulfil a company’s tech-based roles.

Recruiting a technical talent requires more than just a knack to find where they are and attract them to join the company, but the HR person -and anyone involved in recruiting the tech talent should have a good working knowledge of technical-related jargon and essential technical skills.

Whether you’re doing this in house via your own HR team, or using a hiring agency, as a company you must make sure that these technical recruiters have an in-depth understanding of the industry they’re hiring for.

The Difficulty in Hiring Tech Talents

The difficulty in hiring tech talent has doubled from the pre-covid era. With a continuous rapid growth in demand and accelerated digitalization after covid, hiring tech talent has become a bloodbath where a lot of companies compete by offering higher than average salaries, extra perks, and even sign-in bonuses to get ahead.

This has presented as a double edge sword for the recruiters who oversee hiring the tech talent. Not only they have to actively look for the right talents to meet their KPI, but they also must fight retaining their already existing tech-talent who are enticed by the competitor and other companies in need of their talent.

Pandemic induced digitalization also means that various industries will be needing highly skilled tech talent to help them implement digitization of their products and services. This presents another set of issues where not only tech-related companies are vying for the tech talent, but also non-tech-related companies as well.

Moreover, these non-tech-related companies will need a tech-talent who’s familiar and highly skilled with their specific industry. This revelation further narrows the talent pool and leaves a lot of those roles vacant for a very long time.

Aside from the above-mentioned difficulty in hiring tech talents, there’s an internal challenge a recruiter must face when it comes to it: Choosing the right candidate or filling the vacancies faster, and achieving their KPI on time?

In general, a bad hire will always be worse than leaving a position vacant. But sometimes a recruiter does not have the privilege of time, or money to hire the ideal candidate. This presents a conundrum and must be mitigated by laying out clear expectations and requirements of the tech talent. And whether they will take certain compromises when push comes to shove.

Read more: How to Hire A Good Web Developer [A Complete Guide]

Tips for Hiring Tech Talents

Although highly challenging, hiring tech talents is not an impossible task. It just needs a certain tenacity, strategy and a dash of luck to get it done. Here are some of the best tips for technical recruiting.

1. Know The Difference

Hiring tech talents requires a degree of knowledge in tech-related jargons, and how to differentiate between the role’s essential skill requirement and their responsibilities. If you’re new into technical recruiting, you should start by reading this glossary IT terms for tech recruiters by DevsKiller to get things going.

Now that you know the difference between a front-end, back-end, and full stack developer, or what’s different about UI vs. UX developer, you can start checking out what tech roles the company needs. Let's discuss a bit about the technology and the market.

The Tech

Specific skillsets to the IT industry are needed to fill these positions. Let's say, you need to hire a database developer. You can't just contact any database developer you find on LinkedIn and assume they'll be a good fit.

Depending on the company, one's duties may be very different. Smaller businesses' IT departments typically have a bird's-eye view of the entire system. Developers at a larger company, in contrast, may focus on a single aspect of design or implementation.

If you lack technical expertise, you'll need help identifying the candidates who possess the necessary skills and experience. To increase your user experience, you may want to hire a UX developer, someone who can realize your ideas for the site's interface and increase user engagement and retention.

For a non-technical manager, setting specific goals is the first step in isolating the type of skills you need for your project. For example, if you need a better system to store payment data for your e-commerce, you look for a back-end developer with experience in cloud-based solutions like SaaS CMS. If you already have a development team, ask them, or work out a list of objectives with your boss for the new hire.

The Market

The next thing to do is to carefully identify the specific set of abilities you'll need. Websites aren't the only thing developers can help you with. They can also give you a leg up in the business world. New software and tools, such as artificial intelligence (AI) or augmented reality (AR), altered business outcomes and client services even before the first COVID outbreak.

Skilled programmers do more than just keep your website online. In addition, they guarantee that you have entry to cutting-edge programs that will help your business excel and set it apart from the competition. According to studies, a  shortage of 1.4 million software developers is forecasted for the next few years. Currently, there are more than 920,000 unfilled positions for software engineers in the United States, but only about 165,000 qualified candidates. So make sure you find and retain talented programmers.

2. Go to Where They Are

Now that you’ve known exactly what and who you are looking for, it’s time to find them. The easiest way to start is to go to where they are. Finding top tech candidates by posting your job vacancies at one or multiple tech job boards is easy and very doable.

If you’re an employer running a business in Singapore,
Talentport will be best suited for posting your job vacancies.

If online job posting has been set, it’s time to go offline and go to where they are -physically. Look for social events, forums or gatherings where tech workers attend. Send one or two recruiters to mingle and hand out name cards. Don’t forget to share information about your company, especially if there are certain achievements or things that only your company can offer to them.

If going to tech events is not enough, why don't you make your own? Hold a tech-related seminar, coding bootcamps, or invite a proficient tech leader to speak at your company’s event, that will surely entice and attract tech talent to participate.

3. Consider Going Global

If your local tech talent is not sufficient, maybe it’s time to consider going global. Hiring global tech workers who can work remotely or maybe even relocate will widen your talent pool.

You need to broaden your search beyond your home country if you want to find not only developers willing to work for less money, but also those with years of experience and appropriate credentials.

To get to the best people, remote work is essential now more than ever. Businesses are increasingly looking outside of their immediate regions for qualified employees. Even though remote hiring still requires consideration of factors like language and time zones, it offers far more and better options than staying put.

It's easy to find skilled remote developers in places like Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. You can start posting your job vacancy at Talentport now.

4. Avant Garde Referral Program

To succeed in technical recruiting, it’s best that you leave no stone unturned. This includes enticing current tech hires to refer their friend and colleague to join the company. Yes, the good old employee referral program will never fail you. Especially when you put up a hefty sum in bounty for the employee who succeeds in bringing you that much needed tech talent.

To make it even spicier, go spread the referral program to people outside of your company, especially those who are working in the tech industry. Encourage your friend, family or even acquaintances with tech background or working in the tech industry to refer their tech talent friend or family to join your company.

5. Set The Goals and Objectives

One more thing to keep in mind when looking to fill technical positions is to establish some concrete technological objectives. 

Get the team together and discuss your needs and expectations for the position. When your list is complete, you can focus on learning the hard skills you need without ignoring the soft ones.

For instance, you might need a part-time database administrator. Your ideal candidate should be fluent in English and have the social skills to work effectively with others on the team.

The same holds true for all sorts of programmers. Specific abilities are required for each position. In the case of Ruby on Rails developers, for instance, you need someone who is adept at communicating with clients, leading a team, and reporting to you. You also need a developer who can oversee the work of others and integrate back-end features into the user interface. To sum up, you need a developer who is also an excellent team player.

6. Establish the Skills for Test

In today's world, we've learned that not everything that glitters is gold. Perhaps a developer claims to have the necessary expertise and experience, but you need to find out for sure. Until you put them to the test, you won't know.

You can direct your efforts and the requests of some candidates for additional perks toward the most in-demand technical skills if you have a good sense of how popular and necessary those skills are.

You can find these skills by reviewing your hiring goals and the frequency with which various tests are administered. As such, you can gauge the market interest in them and gain insight into the extent of the competition.

7. Prepare The Interview

You can focus on the technical details if you know what kind of developer you want on your team. You can focus on the skills you want to highlight during the interview by preparing targeted questions ahead of time. In other words, don't be shy about getting technical or using specific term.

The goal here isn't about being the expert but to test quality awareness. Obviously, you'll need someone with definitional expertise to test their coding. You can tell if a candidate is enthusiastic about the position and the company by asking them broad questions about how they plan to apply their skills to the improvement of the project.

Testing one's practical abilities can be a real headache for someone who isn't particularly tech savvy. For this reason, it's recommended that you schedule a minimum of two interview trance sessions. The first one is a test of coding and development skills, conducted with the help of technical recruiters and the in-house development staff.

After that, you can set up a second round of interviews where the candidates are specifically asked about your project and how they would apply their skills to enhance your team's productivity. Now that you've narrowed it down to the final candidates, it's time to conduct in-depth interviews with them to learn more about their character. In this case, technical assistance is unnecessary, but you should be familiar with the kinds of solutions that have proven effective for your group.

A great way to assess a candidate's potential teamwork skills is to conduct a group interview. If you already have an IT department, you can put them to use in technical hiring interviews by giving them the opportunity to ask and answer questions about the candidate's technical skills and experience while working in a team. This can also help you gain useful knowledge.

8. Freelance vs. Full-time Developer 

Knowing what kind of developer you need is also crucial when looking to fill open positions. Is a temporary worker something you're looking for? On the other hand, do you seek an employee who will devote themselves wholly to your company? By defining these two criteria, you will gain a clearer picture of the ideal candidate and the best places to find them.

Freelancers appear to be a more prudent choice than permanent employees. Hiring them is simple, thanks to freelancing websites like Arc, Upwork, and PeoplePerHour. It's more cost-effective to hire a freelancer if you only need their services once for a specific project.

It is more cost-effective to hire a full-time developer if you need someone who can execute on your vision and provide the necessary skills and experience over the long term.

9. Search for Candidates on Appropriate Platforms

It's not worth it to look for a job on any social media platform or online bulletin board. Usually, freelance and social media sites tend to be flooded with job seekers, especially when the term "remote" is included in the job description. Better recruitment practices can be implemented when looking for a developer with expertise in a particular framework or language.

Programmers frequently trade code snippets and tips at the many online forums, job boards, and in-person gatherings where they congregate. Putting up a classified ad in the neighborhood is an option. You can also ask people in the community for recommendations about a candidate or for advice on what kinds of questions to ask during interviews.

10. Appoint a technical recruiter

When all effort has been exhausted and you still couldn’t manage to hire a tech talent, maybe this is the right time to appoint a technical recruiter. Not only do they know the industry and its language, they also are highly equipped with qualified recruiters to screen candidates and have access to a wider tech talent pool.

Technical recruiting, if done right, will prove to be a very good investment in the long run. So don’t be too stingy when it comes to remuneration. High quality tech talent will inherently cost more than your regular hire. But they will also do more work and give the best return of investment for the company.

If you like this article, go check out other Talentport read for IT-related content.

Read more: How to Hire Remote Employees for Singapore Company