How to hire developers: 5 tips to attract top tech talent
When you need a dev, you need a dev yesterday. But, if you don’t know where to start looking for this elusive talent, your time to hire developers might be longer than it should. So, the pressure is on – you need to fill those spots with the right people as quickly and effectively as possible.
But how? On the surface, the strategies are clear: find qualified people, evaluate them properly, and take care of their needs. Go deeper, and it’s less clear. Here are tips to bringing top tech talent on board:
5 tips to hire developers
1. Look to where candidates ‘play’
Namely, go to Reddit, YouTube, WhatsApp and Facebook – the most-used platforms by tech people according to the 2019 Stack Overflow survey. Build relationships with candidates on these platforms and craft engaging content to boost your employer brand in their eyes. This will make it much easier to hire a developer who meets your company’s needs.
2. Develop your referrals program
It doesn’t have to be formal or a program loaded with incentives, but asking colleagues about great tech pros in their networks can go a long, long way. Studies regularly find two major benefits to referrals – a shorter time to hire and a higher retention rate than those who applied in response to a job ad.
3. Use effective sourcing tools
If you’re wondering how to find developers who meet your desired criteria, try using candidate sourcing tools – you can define and run your own search (e.g. by skills or location) or use AI-powered tech to fill your pipeline for you.
4. Invest in skills evaluation tools
Coding platforms like Codility and other assessment providers (Criteria Corp, Indeed Assessments, etc.) can help your teams identify the best tech people more efficiently (and objectively, too). Your recruiting software may already integrate with many useful assessment tools so you can keep results and candidates in the same place.
5. Talk about what matters to candidates
Whether you’re networking with candidates and presenting your company, or crafting a strategy for your recruiting teams to use, make sure you speak to what tech people want to know about, e.g. how your engineering teams operate, or what technologies you use. Your online presence can also help candidates better understand the way your teams work, so make sure you have an attractive careers page in place.
If you follow these tips, your process to hire developers can become much easier. Ensure you also provide candidates with a positive candidate experience. And, take a look at our tech job descriptions to start your hiring with an informative and comprehensive job ad.
