6 Best Technical Recruiting Strategies to Fill Your Technical Roles

In this article, we will be sharing the best technical recruiting strategies you should adopt to make your technical recruitment easier. We start by defining what technical recruiting is. 

What is Technical Recruiting?

Technical Recruiting (also referred to as technology recruiting or technical staffing) is the process of sourcing and filling IT and technology-based job roles.   These include jobs roles such as Software Developer, Data Analytics Specialist, Solution Support Engineers, Tech Support Specialists, System/Network Engineer, etc.    Most of these roles usually require a university degree, while some others could be studied on various online mediums. A technical recruiter is usually put in charge of carrying out this recruitment process, and they report to or work with the HR manager/specialist.   Organisations could have their own technical recruiter who will carry out their technical recruitment projects. On the other hand, they could decide to outsource this task if they realise that they do not have the capacity or know-how to carry it out, or if they have their hands full with other core responsibilities.    The two types of recruiters are known as internal recruiters and external recruiters respectively, and both have their advantages.

6 Best Technical Recruiting Strategies to Fill Your Technical Roles

Here, let us look at strategies for technical recruiting and how organisations can fill their technical roles in an easier manner, starting from steps to take when trying to source the best talent, to how the organisation can retain such talent.

1. Decide who will Oversee the Recruitment Project

Some organisations put their hiring managers in charge of their technical recruitment project, while some prefer the services of a tech expert. However, the truth is both of them have different things they can bring to the table, which can improve the quality of your recruitment.    Therefore, in the event that your organisation cannot engage the services of a technical recruiter (a trained recruiter who is also a subject matter expert in the technical role the organisation wants to fill), they can allow both the tech expert and the hiring manager to oversee the recruitment together.   This means that while the tech expert ensures that the candidates applying for the role have a high level of knowledge and experience, the hiring manager can look out for other soft skills, as well as their behaviour, preferences and body language, which they can then use to assess such things like whether the candidate can adapt to their organisational culture and values, the candidate’s interpersonal skills and so on. 

2. Develop a Reputable Success Profile

The goal of hiring the best-fit talent is made easier when a success profile for these candidates is put in place at the start of the process. A success profile entails identifying the key competencies and qualities that will make a candidate succeed and the best fit for a role.   While some organisations only put out the job description for a role, you should go one step further by adding a success profile. A success profile is more comprehensive and includes relevant details such as work and educational experience, professional and technical knowledge in the field, personal qualities and attributes and key capabilities and competencies that candidates must have.   The success profile also contains the short-term goals and long-term goals that the organisation expects the new talents to aim for and achieve. When you develop a standard success profile, potential candidates will be able to easily tell whether they are the right fit for the job or not. This will ensure that as much as possible, only qualified candidates can apply for your technical roles. 

3. Source for Candidates in Relevant Platforms 

One thing common with technical fields is that they almost always have an association, community or platform where they share ideas that are common to them. Placing your job advert through the communities where these professionals gather would have far reaching results. You are more likely to get a pool of qualified and highly skilled people from there than in other general sites.   You should also make use of job advertisement sites that have sections of different fields. You can then look for the section relating to the job role you want to fill. You can also check the different Facebook communities, tech recruitment platforms like  TechJobs, Hacker Noon and TechFetch and so on. All of these are guaranteed to help you, the tech recruiter, fish for the right talents faster and fill your roles quicker. 

4. Use an Applicant Tracking System 

You cannot rule out the automation process if you want to recruit faster and better in this day and age. When recruiting for technical positions, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) helps to automate and manage the hiring process. For example, the ATS can be used to filter out CVs submitted by the candidates, depending on the criteria that you set for the job. This is especially useful when there are a lot of CVs to sort. It also helps to eliminate candidates who are unqualified for the roles based on their credentials.  The Applicant Tracking System also serves as a candidate database, where you can store the details of the candidates. This database could also be used in the future in the event the company wants to hire for the same roles. Through the ATS, they can also send candidates relevant messages regarding the recruitment process.    Investing in an Applicant Tracking System will make your recruitment process so much easier and smoother. 

5. Use the Wide Range of Assessment and Recruitment Methods

When you finally get the pool of candidates from your sourcing channels, you will need to invite them for various assessments, including interviews. Depending on the level and job description, you may decide to use a robust assessment method containing different assessment stages, or a simpler one involving fewer stages. Either way, you must ensure that you use a few varieties of assessment methods in order to help you get only the best of the best for these roles.    For example, after taking aptitude tests that examine their technical skills, you should get them to do role plays, casework, group exercises etc. This will put their wide range of skills to test. See how you can choose the right recruitment assessment tools.  

6. Nurture Your Brand into a Value-driven and Trusted Entity

This last point is not only essential for easily attracting top candidates for your technical roles, but it’s also important for keeping them. By building a strong reputation for your brand, it becomes easier to get the candidates. In fact, they come looking for you even when you do not need them.    Also, the time it takes you to hire becomes much faster because talents are more easily attracted. It is also because of this reason that some of the resources you will put in place to invite people to apply for these roles can be cut, thereby saving you money.   To further nurture your brand, you should create rewarding partnerships with your clients. This will help you boost your standing, and you can also easily have top talent recommended to you through these partnerships. You should also create your own communities managed by your internal tech experts where you can share valuable updates and seek public opinion on varying tech topics. You can also get your experts to share their opinion on trending topics concerning these technical fields. These will help you become a thought leader in the industry.  

How We Recruit the Best Talent 

Over the years, we have used well-thought-out recruitment strategies and methods to attract the best tech talent for clients across Nigeria and Africa. This has made other organisations trust us in helping them recruit these talents and professionals across other sectors.   At Workforce Group, we take a step-by-step approach from planning to execution. This ensures we don’t miss out on vital details that will help us carry out a successful recruitment. We make use of a model that starts with creating a recruitment strategy. We then move on to the execution of plans. This includes preparing assessment questions, sourcing for candidates, conducting assessments, monitoring the process and delivering results.   To learn more about our ways, schedule your free consultation here.