Sometimes recruiting can be based more on a gut feeling than we’d like to admit. When a resume crosses your desk you might immediately get the feeling that the candidate will be ideal for the position – or not. Other times you might feel completely lost trying to work out whether an applicant is right for a project.
Rather than relying on just guesswork or gut feeling, use these data driven techniques in your technical recruiting to increase retention, reduce hiring costs, and find better employees.
Be Specific About What You Are Looking For
It seems so obvious, but often recruiters are just not specific enough when writing job descriptions and advertisements. This ends up frustrating both the developer and the company, as neither has gotten exactly what they are looking for. Around a third of developers say they are frustrated by unclear expectations at work, so it’s important to clarify this from the beginning during the hiring process. Really delve in to the details when getting the job description from the client, and when creating the job advertisement. This creates greater job satisfaction for developers and ensures they stay in the position longer.
Look at Your Experience
Analyze the good hires you made in the last six months to a year. Here are three questions you should ask yourself:
- What abilities did they come in with, versus what did they learn while on the job?
- What were their questions during the interview process?
- What types of projects did they work on before joining your company?
Analyzing the answers to these questions will give you an idea of what you want to look for in future hires and can even help you narrow down your field of candidates. This will ultimately help determine your final selection.
Hire The ‘Whole’ Person
The developers you are hiring are more than just the code they can write, they are actual people with goals, preferences, and long-held habits. To reduce hiring costs, improve morale, and reduce the turnover of quality developers, you need to understand the candidates you are looking for. Remember what makes them not only great candidates, but also great developers.
Increase the Speed at Which You Hire New Developers
Recruiters are often judged by how quickly they can fill a position. Every day a position sits empty, production time is lost and other developers could be approaching burnout due to the increased workload.
However, that does not mean that you should hire the first developer whose resume meets the minimum qualifications. Take information from the job description to uniquely tailor the search and interview process to find the best candidates for your company. If you find a developer you like, don’t spend any more time than you need to before progressing them along the hire process. In an industry like software development, time is talent, so move quickly to secure the best developers for your position.
Related Content: Try These 5 Technical Recruitment Tips to Boost Productivity
Productively Promote Your Brand Among Developers
Your brand is about much more than just what users of your apps or software think, it is also about what the broader software development community thinks of your business. In short, if developers have never heard of your company, they are much less likely to want to come work for you.
You can question and track your current and recent applicants to gather information about the degree of brand awareness people have for your company. Work on appropriately building company image by devoting resources to the platforms most productive to furthering your brand.
Don’t leave your technical recruiting technique to chance, use these data driven techniques to secure the best candidates. If you’d rather get someone else to put in the time and energy into expertly hiring the best software developer, talk to Bydrec about their outsourcing recruitment services, by software developers, for software developers.
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