Tech Recruitment Certification by
Source
software developers
like a PRO
Industry insights, expert advice and hard data
to jumpstart your IT sourcing
Vol. 2
Master the essential skills of IT Recruitment and get certified
Source software developers like a PRO
We are on a mission
to provide Tech Recruiters with the
know-how, skills and tools necessary to
hire the best candidates on the market.
We aim to support you with transforming the way your company
recruits programmers, encourage cooperation between HR and IT
departments to streamline the recruitment process and let you
skyrocket your IT recruitment KPIs.
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Tech Recruitment Certification Course
by Devskiller
This ebook is a part of the
Devskiller Tech Recruitment
Certification Course.
It will prepare you to get certified
and earn a badge proving your tech
recruitment skills and expertise.
This certification course is based on two original resources by Devskiller:
1 . IT recruitment process that works. Proven strategies, industry
benchmarks and expert intel to supercharge your tech hiring,
2 . Source software developers like a PRO. Industry insights, expert
advice and hard data to jumpstart your IT sourcing.
Certification questions asked during the final examination will verify the
knowledge contained within these resources.
To make it easier for you to absorb the knowledge, each chapter is followed
by a series of questions allowing you to assess your current sourcing efforts.
This module is called Self-Assessment.
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The benefits of becoming Tech Recruitment
certified
Thanks to the Tech Recruitment Certification, you will get to:
•
Fast-track your career – invest in yourself and your career by staying
up-to-date on the latest IT recruitment practices,
•
Grow your business – learn how to hire the right programmers for
optimal results,
•
Prove your worth – being certified means showing your expertise
in the field of IT recruitment.
What’s in the course?
Devskiller Tech Recruitment Certification Course covers the
fundamentals of technical recruitment.
We provide you with up-to-date information about developer
landscape, findings of industry reports and intel on the
IT recruitment process along with its stages.
We also present you with tried and true tricks and effective tools
designed to boost your HR metrics.
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Table of Contents
Mission
1
Tech Recruitment Certification Course by Devskiller
2
The benefits of becoming Tech Recruitment certified
3
Introduction
6
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
The grave sins of tech sourcing
8
The biggest mistakes you’re making when sourcing in tech
9
Self-Assessment
15
The 10 steps of successful tech sourcing
16
Self-Assessment
23
Inbound and Social Sourcing
24
Show yourself off
25
Go out
27
Social sourcing and its challenges
29
Self-Assessment
31
The best places to source software developers from
32
Self-Assessment
40
How to source software developers from LinkedIn
41
LinkedIn search filtering
43
Estimating talent pool size
45
Iterative search and Dark Matter
47
Commercial use limit
50
Google X-ray searching LinkedIn
52
Location and willingness to relocate
53
InMail
55
Finding new candidates with content
57
Your own profile and careers page
58
Groups
59
CVs
60
Self-Assessment
61
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Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Conclusion
How to source software developers from Stack Overflow
62
What is Stack Overflow?
64
Paid options for recruiters
65
Policy
66
Why you need Stack Overflow in your (already busy) life
67
The anatomy of a Stack Overflow user profile
68
How to use tags and synonyms for sourcing on Stack Overflow
70
How to cross reference profiles
73
Why sourcing from Stack Overflow and LinkedIn is different
74
Best practices
76
Is it scalable?
77
X-ray searching Stack Overflow
78
Stack Exchange Data Explorer
78
Self-Assessment
80
How to source software developers from GitHub
81
What is GitHub?
83
GitHub glossary
83
The anatomy of a GitHub profile
84
How to search for candidates on GitHub
86
Searching by language, location and number of followers
89
Finding email addresses
91
Searching commits of a given candidate
92
Finding good repositories
92
Sorting your search results
93
X-ray searching GitHub
93
Searching for code
95
Best behaviour
96
Self-Assessment
97
The best tools for sourcing technical talent
98
Self-Assessment
103
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Introduction
Sourcing is “a talent acquisition discipline which is focused on the identification,
assessment and engagement of skilled worker candidates through proactive
recruiting techniques”. Although sourcing and recruitment are most often
treated as separate disciplines, their borderlines are somewhat fuzzy.
Because sourcing takes place early in the recruitment process, it directly affects who you
decide to hire. If you get poor results from sourcing at such an early stage, you can’t expect
a great outcome at the end.
Source: Devskiller
Due to the massive shortage of talent, sourcing has come dangerously close to what feels like
finding a needle in a haystack. If done wrong, it can easily be the most time-consuming stage of
the process. Sadly, HR professionals are currently spending far too much time and putting too
much effort to chase after people who don’t meet basic requirements of the job.
One of the key problems is that despite the fact that talent wars are definitely heated up, many
HR professionals still operate with outdated methods.
Source software developers like a PRO
According to a Glassdoor study conducted by Harris Poll:
• “48% of hiring managers note they don’t see enough qualified candidates
for job openings,
• 52% of hiring decision makers say passive candidate sourcing has been
less effective for their company.”
The reason for this is simple: most HR professionals rely on the same recruitment techniques,
which means they come across and pitch the same candidates.
In this ebook, we tell you how to overcome the
biggest obstacles of sourcing in tech.
We also explain how to structure and optimize
your sourcing for optimal results.
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Chapter 1:
The grave sins
of tech sourcing
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According to Maisha L. Cannon who placed 3rd in the 2015 World’s Greatest
Sourcer Competition, here are the steps to source effectively:
• Identify target skill sets,
• Construct a sourcing strategy,
• Identify potential candidates who meet your criteria,
• Reach out,
• Prepare candidate profiles for review,
• Guide your candidates through the initial phases of recruitment,
• Communicate updates,
• Inject professionalism, enthusiasm and perspective into all
candidate communication.
That’s a lot of places where things can go wrong, isn’t it? Errors can occur practically
at every stage so you need to know where you’re most likely to fail.
The biggest mistakes you’re making when
sourcing in tech
Mistake #1
Lousy job descriptions (or no written job description at all)
Starting the recruitment process is only possible when you can articulate what you are looking
for in a candidate and are able to write it down. It’s virtually impossible to hire efficiently if you
don’t know what you want the person to achieve. Moreover, writing a good job description
takes away some of the manual work you have to do otherwise – as Michael Hyatt argues,
with the right description, you calibrate candidate expectations so people can self-select
themselves for the position or out of it.
How do you get started?
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According to Hyatt, there are at least 5 sections of a good job description:
1 . Summary of the job – “the what”, or the essence of the position,
2 . Purpose – “the big why” of why you’re creating the position in the first place,
3. Duties – the scope of the job,
4. Qualifications – credentials, licenses, specialized training, software requirements,
5. Next steps – how to get in touch if you’re interested in the position.
Every word you use matters and that can be overwhelming. Luckily, you’ve got people you can
ask for help.
Hyatt advises to write down your job description before asking your team members for input.
He believes the way to do it right is to prepare a rough draft of the job description and only ask
for feedback once you do so to avoid “creating by committee.” This is because it’s easier and
faster for a group of people to edit something than to create it.
Mistake #2
Pretending you understand the technicalities of tech jobs
Recruiters typically hire for a number of positions and nobody expects them to be experts
in all of them. However, when it comes to tech jobs, some hiring managers still rely on asking
random or superficial questions, including Yes/No questions along the lines of “Are you
familiar with X, Y, Z?”. It’s hard to verify the level of expertise of an area you’re not competent
to discuss in detail. That’s why as a tech recruiter, you need tools that will support you with
verifying technical skills of candidates.
Mistake #3
Hiring on personal bias and fortune-telling
You can’t just look at someone’s resume and just say “I know they’re the one!” every time you
recruit for an open position. Talent acquisition is and should be a data-driven process. Leave
fortune-telling to Nostradamus.
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Source: James Andrew YouTube
Although research shows that first impressions and affinity effect have a massive impact on
how we hire, relying solely on your gut feeling does your company disservice.
Be careful not to get overly excited about candidates before you meet them in person. I am
not saying you shouldn’t trust people and how they choose to present themselves in CVs, but
you should rely on multiple points of contact, multiple encounters, and skill testing software to
make a conscious, educated decision.
Here’s what happens when you fall in love with a resume too soon:
Source: James Andrew YouTube
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Mistake #4
Ignoring Scrappers
Source: Headway Workforce Solutions
In her powerful TED Talk, VP of Human Resources at UPS Regina Hartley presents two terms
she and her colleagues came up with to distinguish between two types of job seekers.
In the speech, Hartley presents the audience with two hypothetical candidates who are both
equally qualified for the position.
Candidate A – Silver spoon (life engineered toward success)
Candidate B – Scrapper (life full of challenges)
Source: Serenity Amid Frustration
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Hartley acknowledges that the terminology may seem judgemental and politically incorrect at
first glance, but she justifies it by saying that every resume tells a life story worth listening to.
Hartley, who is actually a Scrapper herself, believes that you should be more open to inviting
Scrappers to interviews because they’ve developed “muscle and grit” following adversities
early in life. She believes that “Scrappers are propelled by the belief that the only person you
have control over is yourself”. In times of crisis, they tend to look at themselves and think “what
can I do to make things better?” instead of finding fault with everyone around them. They also
typically don’t give up on themselves that easily, have a sense of humour, and the ability to
build relationships with people.
Hartley argues that companies who hire Scrappers tend to be more diverse and more
productive – in support of her views, she quotes DiversityInc research stating that top
50 companies for diversity outperform the S&P 500 (The Standard & Poor’s 500) by 25%.
Don’t let resumes fool you: underestimated contenders who are fully qualified for the
job have plenty of potential despite the fact that their CVs may suggest otherwise at
first glance.
Mistake #5
Lack of personalization
We’re biologically wired to focus on ourselves, and our career choices impact us more than
other people. For that reason, you should start your initial outreach by talking about the
developer you’re contacting, and not yourself. Remember that everybody’s favourite topic
is themselves.
Research at the University of Liverpool (R. I. M. Dunbar, Anna Marriott and N. D. C. Duncan)
found that people spend approximately 30% to 40% of all everyday conversations
talking about themselves. These numbers are even higher when it comes to social media
communication. According to a Rutgers University study by Mor Naaman, Jeffrey Boase and
Chih-Hui Lai entitled “Is it really about me? Message content in social awareness streams”,
80% of communication on Twitter comes from so-called meformers (people who typically post
content related to themselves and their thoughts), as opposed to informers, who constitute
only 20% of Twitter’s population.
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Take advice from recruiter Rachel Carroll who in an interview with J.T. O’Donnell reveals
that personalized outreach, with mildly-tailored communication getting a 25% response rate,
and highly-tailored communication receiving 60% to 70% of responses. You need to do your
homework and let your dream candidates know you’ve taken the time to analyze their profiles.
Talk about THEM to get their brain interested.
Use Rachel Carroll’s 4-ingredient recipe for top tech talent outreach:
1 . Find something personal about the person that they’ve publicly shared over
social media, like interests, hobbies, or passions,
2 . Look for content related to that interest, i.e. an article or a resource and share
it with them in a personalized email. Start a relationship in a more informal way
to stand out,
3. Once you do that, get to what she calls “their superpower” and talk about the
skills that you found interesting,
4. Finally, ask whether they’d be open to have a quick chat about their career.
To quote Rachel, the “goal is to make it clear I understand now might not be the
right time, but that I’d still like to get to know them better and earn their trust in
the event we are a potential fit in the future.”
Remember that good developers get a tonne of
outreach so you need to make sure you cut through
the clutter. Personalization is no longer an option
but a necessity.
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Self-Assessment
1.
What are the components of job descriptions you’ve created in the
last three months? Do they lack any information? Can you see
the pattern you’re following?
2.
Do you create job descriptions by committee or on your own?
3.
Considering your recent hires, do you tend to favor Scrappers
or Silver Spoons?
4.
How can hiring Scrappers and Silver Spoons benefit your
organization in particular?
5.
To what extent do you personalize your outreach?
How do you do research candidates?
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Chapter 2:
The 10 steps of
successful tech
sourcing
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Let us now focus on strategies you should incorporate to find and attract the best
software developers out there.
Delve into social,
Social recruiting is more than a buzzword. Make sure you take advantage of it. If you want to
attract the right fit for the open spot, diversify your sourcing techniques. I know how much
you like LinkedIn, but so do others. According to Jessica Miller-Merrell, Founder of Workology,
LinkedIn is the number 1 social media tool for recruitment and hiring, with 87% of recruiters
using it on a regular basis.
Source: Workology
Go mobile,
According to Glassdoor,
45% of job seekers say
they use their mobile
device specifically to
search for jobs at least
once a day.
Source: Glassdoor
Source software developers like a PRO
Mobile is becoming the preferred job application channel in IT, so if you’re looking for tech
talent without a mobile-friendly careers page, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.
Look for people who care about the craft,
Attend meetups, conferences, hackathons, workshops and all industry events where you can
find developers who strive for learning.
Find out where devs like to hang out online and offline,
Attend online and offline places where people who care about the craft usually meet.
Good recruiters know where and when to look for the candidates, including Github,
Stack Overflow and Hacker News.
You’ve got to remember though that the person you’re talking to is not their job title.
Listen to what developer Matt Youell has to say about this: “I am not a ‘Rails developer’ or
a ‘.Net engineer’ just because those were the last positions I held or the last technologies
I worked with. I like to solve problems with software. And sometimes hardware. And
sometimes by just sitting and thinking and chatting with other smart people in the company.
I’m a person. My name is Matt. Nice to meet you.”
Once you find someone interesting, make sure it’s about them and don’t just pitch your offer.
Avoid generic messages and don’t go knocking on somebody’s door telling them they’re a fit
if you don’t know that. You’ve never spoken to them and you don’t even know if they feel like
moving jobs, so why don’t you just ask?
Invest in referral programs,
Good developers get pulled into the industry. They are typically noticed by mentors and peers
who help them reach full proficiency and they learn as they work. In other words, they rarely
look for jobs because “prospective employers recognize their greatness quickly”. As a matter of
fact, in 2016 employee referral programs were the third source of of quality hires according to
Global Recruiting Trends 2016 report by LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
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Source: Global Recruiting Trends 2016
The trend is constantly on the rise: Global Recruiting Trends 2017 by LinkedIn Talent lists
employee referrals as the best source of quality hires (48%).
Source: Global Recruiting Trends 2017
Remember that the developers currently employed in your organization are a great entry point
to a whole network of like-minded individuals who can code.
The benefits of employee referrals are manifold:
• You can take advantage of the whole network of your workforce,
• They come with a great applicant to hire conversion rate. Based on Jobvite Index,
employee referral programs generate only 6.9% of all applications and 39.9% of all
hires. “This is nearly double the SHRM reported average”,
• Zao research findings suggest that employee referral programs have a higher
retention rate after one year (48% vs. 33% in comparison to career sites),
• It’s easier to bring the new person up to speed because the employee who referred
the new hire feels partially responsible for them.
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Source: Zao
Give the benefit of the doubt,
Some of the top tech talent pool may have CVs that are not up to date – if you look through
someone’s resume and see something that sparks your interest, ask them to take a skill test.
It’s easy to miss talented developers if they haven’t worked for the biggest companies out
there, but even easier to verify their skills thanks to screening software.
Don’t rush yourself too much,
You’re probably thinking you shouldn’t spend so much time
analyzing resumes. Well, think again – according to eye tracking
study by the Ladders entitled “Keeping an eye on recruiter
behavior”, on average recruiters spend 6 seconds looking at
a resume. Interestingly, self-reports from recruiters suggest that
they “spend 4-5 minutes per resume”.
Source: The Ladders
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Move your skill tests further up the funnel,
The earlier you verify someone’s skills, the faster you’ll know if you should be devoting time to
them at this point. However, make sure you’re not contacting people randomly with a generic
“Hi, can you take our test? We’re recruiting and you seem like a fit.” Remember you need to
make your outreach stand out. Personalize, personalize, personalize. Express interest with
the person and their skills, show that you’ve taken the time to get to know their profiles and
portfolios (if they are available). You can’t go wrong with talking to someone about who they
are and what they do.
Don’t outsource sourcing,
That’s a no-no. Sourcing is the hardest and most mundane part of the process and many HR
professionals are tempted to pay someone to do it. Sadly (but unsurprisingly), when the quality
of your sourcing goes down, Quality of Hire is also likely to decrease.
Do your homework before you reach out to someone. Run a Google search, go through the
candidate’s social media, and look through their projects on their site, GitHub and Stack
Overflow (if they have them). Do a deep scan based on the data you find – I know you’re going
to say it takes time, but it’s top talent we’re talking about here.
If you can, don’t rely too heavily on resume walls because people feel ignored if they don’t hear
back, which happens A LOT. As CareerArc study points out, 36% of employers never notify
candidates about their status. It’s only logical that good developers are more likely to talk to
you if you show real interest and dedication. Nobody likes bouncing CVs off resume walls.
Also, make sure the person going through resumes gathered this way understands the
keywords and their substitutes. You may be losing perfectly qualified leads because you’re not
getting the technicalities right.
Start off on the right foot.
One of the biggest problems of tech hiring is lack of time. According to Dr. Andrew Chamberlain,
Chief Economist at Glassdoor, average Time to Hire is getting longer and it’s increasingly difficult
to find qualified developers in the scarcity situation the IT sector is currently going through.
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Recruiters are rushed while they source, rushed when they email potential candidates and
rushed when they first talk to them. Why? Because they’re afraid to spend too much time on
non-viable candidates who can sense that right away.
A couple of initial messages from recruiters may seem flattering, but after the novelty wears
off, recruiter outreach becomes a nuisance, especially if it’s poorly executed.
One of the biggest problems is that recruiters are not paying attention to profiles.
Clément Folliet makes a good point: “You offer me a Java developer position, when I’ve clearly
showed an interest in Microsoft technologies; you ask me for my phone number, when I’ve put
it on the first line of my CV.”
That’s what is happening in the world of tech recruitment and you know that he has a point.
Folliet goes on to say that the problem can be solved easily by asking people how you
can improve their current situation. He says the only person who got him to discuss the
opportunity asked a simple question “Hello! How can your current job be improved?”.
Approach the people you find interesting like you would in real life. Engage in conversation and
express interest in them. Don’t shout out offers in their general direction and leave, it’s rude.
The rule of thumb is to only talk about the position once you’ve learned who they are and what
they do.
You only get one shot at first impressions and if you
fail to impress the developer, they’re probably gone for good.
As Matt Youell argues, “the loss might be minimal when
soliciting unskilled labor, but with high-demand, creative
talent, that loss is unrealized potential”.
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Self-Assessment
1.
Do you source in house or outsource sourcing?
2.
How many people are involved in sourcing activities for tech positions?
3.
Do you compile candidate profiles?
4.
How long do you usually spend reviewing a CV?
What do you usually focus on when going through CVs?
5.
Do you rely on referral programs? If not, why?
6.
How many places do you tend to research to find information
about a candidate?
7.
What is your average Time to Hire from the last 12 months?
8.
How and where did you come across your best hires from
the last 12 months?
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Chapter 3:
Inbound
and Social Sourcing
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There are many ways to be successful in technical recruitment. One of them is
skilled usage of content marketing. Why? Your proposal is your investment and
you want to invest your resources well in order to get the most out of them.
If you are running IT recruitment campaigns, you are probably doing it because
you want to carry out more programming projects, handle more clients in order
to develop your company and increase your profits. The better the new employee
is, the greater advantage you get.
A good content marketing strategy helps you attract the best people. Content marketing plays
the primary role in building your image, supporting brand awareness, and employee branding.
There are countless methods of using content marketing in tech recruiting. Here are some
of them.
Show yourself off
Start with creating content about yourself. Show yourself as you want to be seen not only by
your customers but also by your future employees. No one wants to work for a company who is
known to nobody. Be meaningful, interesting and credible. Don’t be boring.
1. Let them know how cool you are
Get creative and prepare content which shows your awesomeness. It can be a video presenting
your team, the things you are doing, photos or memes with your branding. Make it remarkable
and shareable – with a little effort, you will reach many people in your talent pool.
2. Tell your story
Who are you? Can you and your employees explain it in an elevator pitch? Take your time and
create the best description of you and make it easy to remember. Everything you make public is
telling your story, so make sure it’s a good one. The company elevator pitch would be a brilliant
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explanation of who you are and what you are doing. So next time your employee is asked about
their job, the answer they give will strengthen your public image.
3. Deliver information
Candidates get frustrated and go away with this frustration in mind if there is lack of
information about the position and your company. Sometimes it is hard to say for people
why you need tech talent when they look at your site and your content. That’s why it’s worth
revealing what your company is doing in an informative yet simple way. You communicate it on
your web page or during the recruitment process. Use infographics, videos and presentations
to make it more attractive.
4. Social media, blog
How do you use your social media accounts? Do you have any? Everything you publish speaks
for you. Use this content with care if you don’t want to spoil your image, so think twice before
you hit the publish button. There are many cases of the wrong usage of certain photos or
memes which seem inappropriate for some people. In your content, include information
relevant to your prospective hires. Share tips and solutions to problems of your target
audience. When you decide how often you’ll publish, be consistent and stick to your decision.
5. Your team
Social media means not only your official accounts but those of your employees as well.
Encourage your employees to share their opinions and ideas. Ask them what content is
appealing to them. Don’t forget they were your job candidates before. If your employees
have great hobbies or great ideas, share them and be proud of your team. Make others
want to join it.
6. Job proposal
Your job proposal is another piece of content you have to get right and it’s the most important
in recruitment. Present all requirements in an appealing and precise manner. Know where to
look for tech talent and do it wisely. Don’t overdo it – it makes you look desperate. And don’t
become a spammer – they are by far the biggest problem of tech recruiting.
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7. Entertainment
What kind of entertainment, you’ll probably ask. Most promising developers are extremely
curious. If they are interested in you, they check your code for sure. Your website code is the
place you can entertain them. Hide some geeky surprises, messages, challenges. Get creative.
Go out
You can do everything to show yourself off but without an audience, all your efforts will
be wasted. Figure out where tech talent is and be there with your fabulous content to gain
credibility.
1. Events, talks, meetups, conferences
As a speaker, it’s your time to shine. Use your time efficiently, think about a topic which appeals
to your audience. If you represent your company, you can show what you are doing by case
studies or what you have learned. If you are an IT recruiter, present behind-the-scenes insights
of your work, the latest trends, tips. Tech talent tends to get involved in technical recruitment
process sooner or later so the knowledge from the expert is highly important to them.
Don’t talk about yourself, think what your audience is interested in and give it to them in an
appealing way.
2. Public challenges, coding contests
Hosting events like coding contests is another opportunity to use content marketing. In this
case, your content is literally the content of your contest. Mistakes in coding tasks, wrong
answers, technical issues and unfair results can all destroy your brand image in a flash. Be sure
you live up to the expectations and get prepared in case something goes wrong.
3. Guest posts, articles, answering questions
Sharing knowledge is one of the best ways to make yourself visible and credible. Post guest
articles where you know they will reach your target audience. Make them want to know you
better. Set aside some time during the week for helping tech talent: look for their questions,
check what knowledge is important to them and deliver the most helpful answers.
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4. Networking
Every time you write an email to a candidate, you are sending them content they may or may
not like. Put your efforts into making your messages personal, clear and interesting. Always do
your research on the person you are about to write to. It takes time, but it’s worth it. It’s better
to produce a well-written message and have a great first impression, than spam people and
have your image destroyed.
5. Internal tools
Providing a valuable tool is always welcome. Think what kind of obstacles your team has
and try to figure out how to get rid of it. If you create a tool which is helpful to your team,
why not share it? This is the most valuable content to tech people because it solves a real
life problem.
The content you deliver is often your first impression and you’ve got to make sure you don’t
make it the last one.
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Social sourcing and its challenges
Research shows that HR professionals rely on the same social networks when they work, with
LinkedIn topping the list with a score of 87% .
Source: Statista
To make things worse, recruiters tend to use LinkedIn in a very similar manner, mostly to
“contact candidates or potential candidates” which comes second with a staggering 75%.
Source: Statista
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This means we are all circling around one talent pool using the very same methods and yet,
we expect unique results.
To make things even harder, web architecture and development framework come third on
LinkedIn’s list of top 10 skills to get you hired here and today, which means developers are in
VERY high demand.
Source: Slideshare
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Self-Assessment
1.
What is your preferred method of contacting prospects?
Phone, email, InMail or in person?
2.
What are the biggest problems associated with the work of people
you’re trying to hire? Can you think of a tool you could build for your
target group?
3.
How many events, hackathons, conferences and meetups do you
attend? Did you meet any of your best hires in this kind
of environment?
4.
Have you got any Easter eggs or tasks hidden in your code?
Do you think it would be a good idea to introduce them?
5.
Who is in charge of your employment branding?
6.
Do you run a blog? What sort of content do you publish in social media?
How can you make that content better and more compelling
to your target audience?
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Chapter 4:
The best places to source
software developers
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The first rule of quality IT sourcing is to be where your talent is. So ask yourself
these questions:
• Where do programmers spend their time?
• Where do they work on open source projects?
• Where do they share knowledge and help each other?
If you know the answer to these questions then you are on the right IT sourcing
path. Programmers are a specific group of people whose work is their passion
and they spend their free time on side projects. You can easily find them when
you know where to look.
1 . LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the biggest business and employment-oriented social service available via
website and mobile app. To put it simply, it’s a social platform for professionals which
resembles traditional networking events. You can add connections and receive invitations
to connect, speak to candidates, employers, and converse via private messages.
You can also look at user profiles to find relevant information like education, employment
history, skills, languages, and endorsements. LinkedIn is the go-to place for recruiters
because it’s a purely professional network and contacts expect to be approached.
The platform offers premium packages designed for commercial use, a “Jobs” section, as
well as company pages where you can showcase your brand and promote content.
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2 . Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is the biggest platform for users to ask and answer questions on
computer programming. It was founded in 2008 by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood –
software developers who also run two of the most well-known blogs on programming.
In 2015 Stack Overflow had 5 million registered users from all over the world and over
101 million monthly unique visitors. Users earn points and badges for their valued
contribution. This system helps you discover the best programmers who are experts
in their field. Search topics for skills or languages and then find programmers whose
answers are voted as the best. Many users provide links to their websites or Twitter
accounts in their profile information – use them to build relationships with your target
audience. On Stack Overflow there is a job board where you can post your job ad. If you
are an employer, there are tools for you to brand and advertise your company and
source candidates.
3 . GitHub
GitHub is a site with open source code repositories. It was founded in 2008 and it’s growing
really fast. GitHub has more than 14 million users and over 34 million projects which makes
it the largest host of source code in the world. All users have technical skills and they are
your potential candidates. Even without registration you can browse repositories and you
can check profiles of programmers who are contributing to them. Additionally, users often
provide an email address, website or Twitter handle to be displayed in their profile bio.
Check how many followers they have – the more followers a programmer has, the more
likely they are to be of interest to you. GitHub also has an advanced search engine which
you can use to browse members with specific technical skills, talents, keywords in their
profile, location, etc.
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4 . Google Groups
Google Groups is a place where you can create your own group or join existing ones. It is
a popular community site for programmers. There are various groups where users can
ask questions, discuss and share their interests. The groups fall under several categories.
The best one to join is the Computers category. This category is divided into many
subcategories (such as Artificial Intelligence, Databases, Games, Operating Systems,
Programming, Security, Software) and regions. You can also use the search engine to find
more groups and threads. You can join and follow them by email. Use a filter to find groups
in any language and don’t worry – even if you don’t know the language, you can use Google
Translations in every post. Groups names are sometimes very specific so the more you
know about the skills needed, the better group you discover. Examples of general groups
are Android developers, Developers, and more technical groups examples are Angular,
Mongodb user.
5 . CodeProject
CodeProject is a community for programmers with over 12 million users. It consists of
a discussion board, the Lounge (board for members only), articles, tutorials, and community
surveys. CodeProject aims at being a valuable resource and a place where programmers
can learn, teach and have fun. Signing up is free and once you register you can join all
discussions. In the Lounge you can gain reputation because it is a place to talk about
everything except for asking programming questions (and advertising). Be helpful, be
remarkable and the right people will notice you. If you want to learn something about
programming, the beginner tutorial section is the right place for you. Without having to
register, you can browse articles, tips and questions. You can check users and sometimes
they have websites or social media accounts posted on their profiles.
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6 . Hacker News
Hacker News is a site created by Y Combinator – an investment fund and startup
incubator. This site focuses on IT and startups. Users have nicknames instead of their real
names and the profiles often have no information. That said, most programmers use the
same nickname on different sites so you can check the names of people who seem to be
interesting on other platforms. In the News section users can post threads on topics they
find interesting. This section helps you find out what programmers are interested in and
what’s hot in their world. The Comments section is a list of comments listed in real time, and
Show is a list of things users created and want to share. The monthly thread Ask HN: Who
is hiring? where you can post your job ads (if you are part of a hiring company) is the most
important place on the platform. If you are an external recruiter, you can find users who are
looking for a job right now and check their profiles. Apart from the list of threads, use their
search engine to find popular content, libraries, tools, languages.
7. DZone
DZone is a community and publisher of technical content for programmers. It has over
1 million users, mostly from Europe and the Americas and 91% of them have a college
education. They use DZone to stay up-to-date with the IT world and share the most
popular content in their field. Every post is moderated by editorial staff so it’s credible
and interesting. Monitor the articles there to find users who fit your talent pool and know
more about programming which may help you in talent sourcing as well. The content is
divided into individual zones which gather all material on specific fields. The most popular
are Mobile and Java.
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8 . Quora
Quora is a question and answer site covering almost every topic you can think of. Most of
the profiles are created under real names and they are often descriptive. Questions are
grouped into topics which you can individually follow and join. For example the topic Java
has 738 thousand followers and over 59 thousand questions asked. Look for topics on the
skills your candidates should have and other programming related questions. Start with
the largest categories: Computer Programming, Software Engineering (both over 1 million
followers), Web Development, Programming Languages. Each topic has Top Stories and
Most Viewed Writers which are both excellent places to look for tech stars. There is also
a related topic list so you can extend your search. Follow the best users to find where they
are posting to discover more talent. Checking recent activity gets you an idea of their
skills. Answers are being up-voted – the more votes, the higher the chances of finding great
talent. Quora is also a place where you can build your reputation as a recruiter. Be honest
in your profile and help programmers with questions you know answers to. Consider asking
questions on tech recruiting to get the attention of your prospects.
9. Reddit
Reddit is one of the largest networking services with communities that have discussions
about their particular interests. The biggest community on programming is a programming
subreddit with more than 650 thousand users and the topics covered are more general than
these on /r/coding. /r/coding has a strict policy of programming-related discussions. There are
many communities on programming languages with the biggest (over 116 thousand members)
one devoted to Python – /r/python. A complete list of languages on Reddit with the number
of followers can be found here. There are two subreddits with job ads /r/forhire and /r/jobbit.
You can not only post your offer, but you can also find people who are looking for a job.
Other subreddits worth visiting are GameDev for game developers and AndroidDev for app
developers. There is also a subreddit you can actively join – CS Career Questions where users
ask about careers in Computer Science related fields. Membership of Reddit is free of charge
and most users are anonymous. However, after registration you can send direct messages
to them.
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10 . XDA Developers
XDA Developers is a mobile software community with over 7 million users. It’s the best
place to look for programmers who specialize in mobile. On XDA mobile programmers can
discuss and share information on systems such as: Android, Sailfish OS, Windows Phone,
WebOS, Ubuntu Touch, Firefox OS and Tizen phones. There are also separate forums for
each phone model using those systems and Android apps and games. XDA also has an
analysis section with editorials and opinions. To comment under articles in this section, you
need to have an active Disqus account. Commenting on forums requires registration on
the XDA platform. Member activity is displayed on the “thanks meter”. Most users don’t
provide their real names and contact info.
11 . SitePoint
SitePoint is a website with forums and resources for web developers. It has over
230 thousand users. You can browse profiles without registration but users don’t typically
post their names and contact information. Members get likes for their answers, comments
as well as receive badges. The most important badges are the trust levels – look for
members who get the best levels: 2 and 3. The most popular forums are HTML & CSS,
JavaScript and PHP. All threads and user lists are sorted by time of the last post.
1 2 . CodeGuru
CodeGuru is a small community site for Microsoft programmers and programming in C++,
Visual Basic, .NET Framework etc. There are articles, a whitepapers section and forum.
By browsing articles you can find experts because of their strict guidelines for the texts.
The forum has 360 thousand members and to see the profiles you need to register. On the
forum you can see how many users are active in a given thread at the moment. The most
popular threads are on Visual C++ Programming, C++ Non Visual C Issues, C Sharp, Visual
Basic 6.0 and Java. There is also job board with Open Positions and Looking for Work where
you can post your offer or browse users who are looking for a job.
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13 . Gitter
Gitter is a community site where programmers can talk about programming and
developing-related issues in groups or have private chats. There are more than
320 thousand users from more than 74 countries who are gathered in over 40 thousand
communities. If you have a Github account, you can use it to join Gitter. Explore rooms to
discover which one has most users and posts. When you are in the room, you can see the
chat, user list and recent activity. Check user profiles to find their websites, contact and
additional information. Some users are hiding behind their nicknames but try to check them
in a search engine – you may find their social media accounts this way. After registration,
you can follow users to build your database.
14 . Meetup
Meetups are the best way to meet and carry out IT sourcing in real life. Find a meetup on
a topic you want to source specialists in, in the area of your interest, check if you can join
(some meetups are programmers only) and meet your talent pool. Check what they are
passionate about, and what their specialty is. Meetup gives you a great chance to introduce
yourself and build your reputation as a tech recruiter. After registration on meetup.com you
get access to members interested in events related to your talent skills. Most users sign in with
social media accounts so it’s easy to find them online.
These resources are great to look for programming talent, but
if used without caution, they can harm you. Programmers often don’t
like recruiters and when they find out you are using these resources
purely for IT sourcing, you can get in trouble. Never spam – treat
them well, help them when you can, build relationships, be sincere
and they will come to you.
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Self-Assessment
1.
Where do you find most of your hires?
2.
How many of your candidates are found on LinkedIn?
3.
Based on your experience, what are the top 3 best places to
recruit software developers?
4.
Do you follow house rules on each of the platforms? To what extent?
5.
What is your monthly budget for premium versions of these
platforms? What are the biggest benefits of the paid memberships
you’ve purchased?
6.
What social networks do you rely on when sourcing? Do you check
private profiles on Facebook or Twitter? How does content
published there influence your decisions?
7.
Are you active on Stack Overflow or GitHub? How can you use
these platforms for recruiting developers?
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Chapter 5:
How to source
software developers
from LinkedIn
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Based on 2016-2017 Talent Shortage Survey, IT professionals constitute the
second biggest talent shortage group globally, and let’s be honest, one of of the
hardest professionals to recruit.
Source: ManpowerGroup
LinkedIn is the go-to place for sourcing software developers for majority of recruiters, so it’s
a very crowded and competitive space. The higher the demand for top tech talent, the more
efficient you need to be with your sourcing.
In order to maximize the potential of a very limited talent pool, you need to get the most data
from LinkedIn and simply source more effectively than others do. It takes a certain amount of
experience to work out an effective pattern of sourcing developers on LinkedIn – here’s how
you can become a LinkedIn sourcing superstar.
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LinkedIn search filtering
Let’s start with the basics, shall we?
You can look for people with a given skill or join groups on the subject (which is highly
recommended if you’re looking for people who care about their craft).
Here are the results you get when you run a simple location-specific search for people who
specialize in Java.
The problem with this type of search is that the results you retrieve are identical to those of
your competitors – read on to find out how to get some more unique ones.
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Let’s go back to the simple search for a moment. To narrow down your results, you can use the
LinkedIn search filtering menu located to the right:
You can choose from the “Industry” menu:
• Computer Games,
• Information Technology and Services,
• Internet,
• Staffing and Recruiting,
• Program Development.
Another way is to search via current and past
companies (you can add any company to the list).
The “Company” option also allows you to prioritize organizations with the largest talent pools
and focus your employee branding efforts on them. The same goes for schools and universities,
but you shouldn’t be too attached to the requirement of a formal degree, as 70% of devs say
they are self-taught (2016 Stack Overflow Developer Survey).
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Using job-specific keywords further increases your chance of finding the right person.
However, remember that early in the process you should try to be inclusive. If you’re not, you’ll
most likely miss some gems. To what extent? The impact of omitting or altering job criteria is
presented in the LinkedIn Talent Solutions ebook entitled “Data Driven Recruiting: Find quality
hires faster with talent pool analytics”. Check it out for yourself:
Source: LinkedIn Talent Solutions
As you can see, removing or altering just one of the criteria increases the talent pool over 6
times, and that makes a huge difference in a very crowded and limited talent pool everyone is
circling around.
Estimating talent pool size
Data is a strategic asset in talent acquisition, but
according to LinkedIn Talent Solutions resources,
2 out of 3 recruiters don’t have the tools to
understand the market and talent pool they are
trying to recruit from.
Do they need them? They certainly do, as a staggering 77% of recruiters believe they are more
efficient when they understand the market and talent pool they are recruiting from.
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How to assess talent pool size? Let’s see how many people mention “java” in their profiles in your
area. You can use LinkedIn filtering to gauge talent pool size in an area of your choice:
The next step is to play with the filters and search options. i.e. by adding more requirements
through running a “java ruby” search in the same area. Remember that when you add keywords
in a string, LinkedIn reads it as if there’s an “AND” operator in between.
Erik Putkonen talks about getting talent pool insights from LinkedIn in this post and he says
that by adding every requirement from the list “instead of just saying that there were too many
requirements or that few would meet these requirements, I was able to show what the numbers
were” for each of the requirement. You can see exactly which of the requirements shrinks your
talent pool most and decide if you can alter or omit any of them.
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Here are the results of an iterative search he completed:
Source: RecruitmentBlogs
Iterative search and Dark Matter
As mentioned above, the problem of basic one or two keyword searches is that you find people
who everyone else finds. Because they are from the top of the pile and people usually go from
top to bottom, these people are frequently contacted by recruiters and to put it mildly, they are
most likely not in love with the idea of recruiter outreach.
How to find someone who’s not receiving tens of messages a day?
Meet Glen Cathey of Boolean Black Belt who rightly argues that as so many recruiters use
LinkedIn at work, you need to get competitive advantage over other recruiters. One of the
ways to do so is to improve your searching skills so you access what Cathey calls “LinkedIn’s
Dark Matter”, or undiscovered profiles. To do so, you need to think (and search) creatively –
this Ruby LinkedIn sourcing challenge is a great place to see what Cathey means by creative
developer sourcing. Cathey argues that Dark Matter results constitute “at least 50% of each
source searched”, so there’s a lot at play here.
Glen Cathey believes you should run multiple searches (he calls that process “iterative search”)
to get optimal results. Here’s his recipe:
1 . “Start with maximum qualifications,
2 . Use the NOT operator to systematically filter through mutually exclusive result sets,
3 . End with minimum qualifications.”
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So, as Cathey advises, you should specify:
• Required qualifications: A,B, C,
• Explicitly desired qualifications: D, E,
• Implicitly desired qualifications: F.
Here’s how you go from maximum to minimum qualifications, Boolean style:
Source: Boolean Black Belt
And here’s the discrepancy between maximum and minimum results you could be getting:
Source: Boolean Black Belt
Impressive, right? There’s actually more, as some users don’t mention certain terms on
purpose. They do it to avoid getting found by recruiters. Example? There are people who are
experts in Java who never use the word “Java” in their LinkedIn profile because they don’t want
to be found so easily. They want to be accessed only by cream of the crop recruiters who know
how to search out of the box.
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A handy idea Cathey gives in his great presentation is that you can run a search to find
“software engineers or developers or programmers who have that as their current title but
they don’t mention any primary programming language”. These people don’t show up in the
standard “java ruby” searches most tech recruiters rely on and as a consequence are less
frequently contacted by recruiters.
Let’s look at an example of how you can access less frequently retrieved results. If you’re
looking for cloud experts, you can just search “cloud” in your area, but you’re only accessing
top of the pile candidates again. However, if you work on your iterative search, you’re getting
competitive advantage over your colleagues. You don’t need to specialize in the discipline –
Cathey mentions he uses Google to confirm or deny the relationship of the terms with the skill
he’s looking for, because most times he doesn’t specialize in it himself.
Source: YouTube
It’s hands-down one of the best tips out there when it comes to sourcing devs.
Another amazing point on the importance of polishing your search skills is made by
Irina Shamaeva of Boolean Strings blog. Check out these discrepancies between
returned results:
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Source: Boolean Strings
Both Cathey and Shamaeva are great experts and you should definitely follow them to
learn how to retrieve top results and think creatively.
Commercial use limit
There’s a commercial use limit on free LinkedIn accounts when you use LinkedIn for what
looks like hiring, prospecting or scraping. According to LinkedIn Help, “this limit is calculated
based on your search activity since the first of the calendar month.” Data security limit on
profile views may also prevent you from temporarily viewing profiles of members you’re not
connected with.
Here are the data security limit parameters officially listed by LinkedIn:
• Search frequency,
• Viewing suggested profiles,
• Non-name searches,
• Mobile searches,
• Searches outside your network,
• Other factors.
You should also know that it recently got more difficult as there is now a limit of profiles you
can access from outside of LinkedIn.
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Source: SocialTalent
LinkedIn doesn’t publish the exact number (people claim it’s around 50 for most users).
With the Premium subscriptions profile views are unlimited.
Here are the activities that don’t count towards the data security limit:
1 . Searching profiles by name from within LinkedIn (using the search box),
2 . Browsing 1st-degree contacts using the connections page,
3 . Going through jobs on the jobs page.
While a lot of tech recruiters rely on the free version while they work, others use LinkedIn
Recruiter Lite which comes at $119.95/MO. It’s worth checking it out because you get
30 InMails to engage with top talent which is by far the best feature. If you’re not sending these
messages on a regular basis, you’re probably fine with the free version. Some people try to
work around the commercial limit by viewing profiles while logged out or in incognito mode.
Another great way to deal with the membership roadblock is to X-ray LinkedIn on Google.
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Google X-ray searching LinkedIn
Searching LinkedIn via Google is a useful skill to have. Here are the basics of the technique:
• Log out of LinkedIn (some people also go to incognito mode to do this),
• The general rule is to use “site: or inurl: operator in Google, followed by the URL
of the site you are searching on”, so in the case of LinkedIn it’s site:linkedin.com or
inurl:linkedin.com, the difference being that the inurl: searches the whole URL and
the site: searches the domain (so the beginning of the URL),
• Prepare your keywords.
Here’s a sample X ray site: string (click the link to see results in Google).
site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin “current * test manager” -intitle:answers -intitle:updated
-intitle:blog -intitle:directory -inurl:jobs -inurl:megite.com -intitle:profile -inurl:jobid
Source: Boolean Black Belt
It seems really complicated but it’s actually not when you start doing it on a regular basis. The
secret to X-ray searching is to use shortcuts. One such shortcut is this Google Custom Search
hack proposed by Irina Shamaeva:
Click this link:
https://cse.google.com/cse/publicurl?cx=009462381166450434430:ecyvn9zudgu
and you’ll see a search box. Type in your keywords to see the results in Google (remember to
log out of LinkedIn first).
The link above simply shows the results of this search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:linkedin.com/in+OR+site:linkedin.com/pub+-pub.
dir&num=100&newwindow=1&filter=0&gws_rd=cr&ei=IDD3WKmkJ6PX6QTfnIbgAg and
the results you get are identical, it’s just quicker to carry out (hey, shortcuts for the win, right?).
The notion of X-ray searches is really complex and you definitely need to pursue it to source
like a boss.
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You can also use field commands in LinkedIn to find members with a given profile. These field
commands include:
title:
company:
school:
firstname:
lastname:
Caution: These commands need to be written in lowercase and the Boolean
operators AND OR NOT must be written in uppercase. SocialTalent has a great
post by Holly Fawcett on the 2017 changes in internal LinkedIn searches.
Location and willingness to relocate
According to ManpowerGroup 2016-2017 Talent Shortage Survey, average global talent
shortage equals 40%, with countries like Japan topping the list with a whooping 86%.
Source: ManpowerGroup
As the degree of talent shortage varies between countries, it’s worth getting into talent pool
analytics of your region for the positions you’re typically hiring for. NeoRecruiter points out that
you can even create a talent density map to see where the people you’re looking for are based.
Source software developers like a PRO
Source: NeoRecruiter
Another idea is to use LinkedIn search filters to specify the location you’re interested in.
This comes in handy when you’re looking for software developers from your area or an area
you would like to open an office in.
An example from the software development industry – a few years ago, Qualcomm needed to
recruit research software engineers in the very competitive San Diego area. Following some
in-depth talent pool analytics, they’ve found that Sydney, Australia offered an abundance of
people with the skillset they were looking for. They eventually built an office there with the aim
to house most of their research software engineers.
Another great location tip is to promote your employer branding communication in the
location where the talent you need to grow is abundant. This way, they are familiar with your
brand long before you even reach out for the first time.
You can also look for developers who may be willing to relocate, as described by Andrew
Stetsenko, Founder of Relocateme.eu. This strategy is still not utilized by many tech recruiters,
so you have a chance of finding “the one”.
One way to find them is to run a simple search in LinkedIn like this one: “Java relocate” or “Java
relocation”. The results you get this way are scarce but there’s a chance these people might
be very open to discussion – they most likely need a change in their life. Some of them even
specify the area of their interest in their description.
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InMail
Although top tech talent is now more visible than ever, it’s simultaneously getting harder to get
these people to talk to you. How to make them more talkative with InMail?
LinkedIn Talent Solutions came up with the 9 golden rules of InMail to help you get things
moving in the right direction.
1 . Review candidate profile. Let them know what caught your attention – it’s flattering, plus
it shows you’ve done your job.
2 . Grab attention. One way of doing that is to mention mutual connections, it often
works wonders.
3 . Show you are selective. Tell people what makes them interesting to you and compliment
them (don’t be cheesy though).
4 . Be conversational and brief. Write like a person and don’t just paste the job description
in your message. People enjoy talking to other people – remember to stay human despite the
iterative nature of InMail. You’re not a robot and let your messages show that.
5. Listen. Ask people about their goals and respond to whatever clues you get from them.
Relocation? More responsibilities? What’s the one thing that could make their life better?
Identify their needs and see if you can help fulfill them.
6 . Focus on goals. Tell people what’s in it for them, otherwise you seem self-centered and
desperate to fill an open position.
7. Leverage content. Devs like data – use whitepapers, reports and other resources to
illustrate your point.
8 . Be patient. Use status updates to stay in the mind of the candidate throughout the process
as a gentle reminder.
9. Add a call to action. Invite to discuss the subject, don’t give a yes/no option to apply
right away.
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Since we’re talking InMail, let’s throw in a couple of additional recommendations here:
10. Understand what developers find interesting in a position so you know what you
should focus on when you first talk to them. According to Stack Overflow research 60% of
software engineers believe product details are most important part of the new position, and
59% claim they would like to know the compensation details when they first hear about the
opportunity. Use that knowledge when you reach out.
Source: Stack Overflow Business
11. Build a strong talent brand – people who engage with it are “2x more likely to accept
your InMail.” Finally, don’t disregard company connections because they are “1.5x more
likely to accept your InMail.”
12. Relax and be yourself. Based on 2015 Stack Overflow Developer Landscape research,
it appears that developers don’t really hate InMail as much as you think:
Source: Stack Overflow Business
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Finding new candidates with content
LinkedIn Talent Solutions recommend using Status Updates to show thought leadership and
expertise to your candidates, present you as a strategic partner and expand your reach. They also
advise using Sponsored Content to raise brand awareness and get new leads.
You can use Sponsored Content to estimate what your target audience find interesting
because they are data-rich:
Source: The Modern Recruiter’s Guide by LinkedIn
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Your own profile and careers page
Effective LinkedIn sourcing starts with an impeccable personal profile. According to the LinkedIn
resource “The Modern Recruiter’s Guide”, here’s what a good recruiter profile looks like:
Source: The Modern Recruiter’s Guide by LinkedIn
When it comes to recruitment,
a lot of emphasis is placed
on having a bold headline.
Here’s a handful of inspiration
from LinkedIn:
Source: The Modern Recruiter’s Guide by LinkedIn
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Groups
There are a couple of ways to locate LinkedIn groups, but the easiest one is to run a simple
search with the keyword of your interest and click “Groups”. This is what you see when you
type “Python” and click “Groups” in the upper menu:
When you find the group, you click “Ask to join” and wait to be accepted.
You can also browse the LinkedIn Groups Directory:
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The best group tip is to “convert highly connected group-only connections to
1st degree connections” but be careful. Recruiters often abuse LinkedIn groups
so make sure you’re not one of these people developers actually hate.
CVs
Because Slideshare is part of LinkedIn, each CV uploaded to LinkedIn is automatically
uploaded to SlideShare, unless you tick a box saying “Don’t upload to SlideShare”. This is great
news because it means that these CVs are available to you – you just need to know how to look
for them.
You can do that by running a Google search as suggested by Stetsenko:
site:slideshare.net intitle:resume PHP
Stetsenko suggests you can order the search results by using the “Sorted by date” option.
Source: How to source for Software Developers who are willing to relocate
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Stetsenko believes that best results are achieved when a search is narrowed
down by adding “intitle:resume” or “intitle:cv”. Granted, the results you get this way are
scarce but they are definitely worth checking out because they are bottom of the pile.
Sourcing from LinkedIn can give you high hopes, but the number of returned InMails
is disappointing. Remember to use iterative search and think creatively to access Dark
Matter results, otherwise you risk landing on the pile of unwanted developer outreach.
Finding bottom of the pile candidates is critical to finding the right developer.
Self-Assessment
1.
How many of your hires from the last 12 months come from LinkedIn?
2.
What is your monthly budget allocated to sourcing from LinkedIn?
3.
Do you ever alter or remove any of your job criteria to expand your
target talent pool?
4.
Are you able to access Dark Matter results? Do you ever use iterative
search or rely on simple search queries?
5.
Do you use Google to X-ray search LinkedIn? Which of the field
commands do you use most frequently?
6.
Have you ever recruited someone who had to relocate to work in the
position? What challenges did you come across (if any)?
7.
Is your personal brand on LinkedIn strong? What can you do to make
it better?
8.
Have you ever tried LinkedIn Groups for sourcing? What was your result?
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Chapter 6:
How to source
software developers
from Stack Overflow
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Top-tier software engineers tend to have steady jobs and they are very
passive which makes them hard to recruit. How passive exactly? According to
Stack Overflow 2016 Developer Landscape, 97.5% of all software engineers are
currently employed, but only 33.04% of them are in a job they love.
In IT recruitment, there’s very little chance of top tier engineers knocking on your door and if
that happens, consider yourself lucky. In most cases, however, it takes a great deal of time and
effort to hire a software developer.
Because the majority of developers are passive candidates, recruiters need to be where they
hang out. Recruiters should use Stack Overflow for three purposes:
1. Discovering new candidates,
2. Accessing vital information to leverage during outreach,
3. Assessing candidate competency.
In this chapter, we explain how to source software engineers from Stack Overflow and how to
use the data available on the platform in the recruitment process.
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What is Stack Overflow?
Stack Overflow is a programming Q&A site with technical questions. It is part of a larger group
called Stack Exchange Network. It aims to solve day to day problems which are posted in the
hope of getting an answer from fellow developers. The code posted is fragmentary and that’s
because it’s designed to deal with a particular issue.
Questions are tagged with programming language or application language which makes them
easy to browse. Answers get upvoted and downvoted and people get reputation points for
high quality contribution. To keep Stack Overflow a top resource, they also get downgraded for
poor answers and silly questions. The person who asked the question gets to choose the best
answer for their query.
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Paid options for recruiters
Stack Overflow Talent allows you to post listings, search candidates, add your company page to
showcase your brand, and much more. There is also the Candidate Search feature which gives
you the opportunity to access Stack Overflow community members who voluntarily opted in
to be contacted by employers.
You can purchase annual plans, fully customized solutions as well as individual job slots. Using
their premium options is strongly recommended if you have the budget – this way you access
great candidates who are highly relevant to what you’re looking for. If you don’t, there are ways
to still use Stack Overflow data without allocating funds to it. There is only one rule: adhere to
policy and all will be well.
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Policy
Stack Overflow Talent boasts the highest response rate among other industry recruitment
platforms and they work hard to keep it that way.
The general recommendation is to use Stack Overflow to find people and look at their skills but
not for outreach. That said, it’s advised to use other means of contact for the sake of getting in
touch if you can’t afford the premium option.
The Stack Overflow community is very sensitive when it comes to recruiter spam and it is in
your best interest to abide by house rules. Recruiters who don’t comply are reported. Sending
spam is also prevented by means of an unanswered messages limit.
Stack Overflow works with employers and agencies directly and monitors their activity very
closely. Abusing the personal messaging feature is not advised because you risk getting your
privileges revoked.
To get a full understanding of what you can and cannot do, have a look at Stack Overflow
Talent House Rules:
Source: Stack Overflow Talent House Rules
As you can see there are many rules and limitations regarding recruiter activity.
Is Stack Overflow worth the hassle? Absolutely. Here’s why.
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Why you need Stack Overflow in your (already busy) life
According to 2015 Stack Overflow Developer Landscape 22% of developers don’t have
a LinkedIn account, so if you’re only using LinkedIn to source, you’re missing a huge part of your
talent pool.
Also, reputation gained in Stack Overflow is more of a testament than CVs. Glen Cathey
of Boolean Black Belt says that “while LinkedIn endorsements can be easily attained, Stack
Overflow reputation points and badges are relatively hard-earned in comparison.” Granted,
not all great devs are active on Stack Overflow, but that’s easy to verify because you can cross
reference their profiles which are typically available in their bio.
The reason you need Stack Overflow in your recruitment process is because it’s an amazing source
of information about the candidate which is open to the public. Once you register, you can browse
users and look at their activity. This allows you to not only identify new leads, but also get an idea
of the level of expertise of candidates you’ve found elsewhere. From the technical point of view,
it’s best to look at their current activity and when they joined the platform. Some recruiters
send Stack Overflow profile links to their Heads of IT recruitment, but this slows down work in
your company and puts pressure on the already busy tech employees. It’s more efficient to rely
on Stack Overflow’s reputation system followed with a coding test which you can carry out in
the process.
As Stack Overflow say themselves in their product tour, “this site is all about getting answers.
It’s not a discussion forum. There’s no chit-chat.” In theory this means you’re not going to see
the personality of the candidate shine through in a very technical and to-the-point Q&A site.
However, the Stack Overflow community (especially its more senior members) have a reputation
for being quite snarky towards newbies who tend to ask simple questions. It’s not uncommon to
see a relevant introductory programming question getting closed or receiving “why don’t you
google that yourself” answers.
Have a look around to see whether the software engineers you’re interested in participate in this
kind of activity or whether they are more active in threads providing a learning opportunity.
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The anatomy of a Stack Overflow user profile
The best way to access data about the developer is to look at their profile which provides
a great deal of information. Here’s what you can learn:
Stack Overflow profiles have these pieces of information available to other users:
• Username,
• Twitter handle,
• Tags contributed to,
• Bio,
• Reputation,
• Information about
• Location,
• Question asked,
their activity, i.e.
• Website,
• Other profiles,
recent activity.
• Member since,
• Profile picture,
A few things you can do with that information available to you:
Learn their real name by visiting their website or Twitter (remember to look up that
person on LinkedIn),
Discover their side projects – they are often provided in the “website” section,
See what they’re currently working on by means of recently asked questions.
Recent activity is a great ice-breaker when it comes to initial outreach messages,
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Get to know their top skills – these are typically reflected by top tags in their profile.
They are also useful because bios are often left blank so they make up for the lack of
information there. Read on to learn more about tags – they are so important they deserve
their very own section below),
Check their reputation points which you can see here:
Go through their badges The Stack Overflow badge system is actually really complex.
There are badges for pretty much everything, including contributing, creating frequently
used tags, reorganizing the content on the platform, raising helpful flags… You name
it. There’s even a “Not a robot” badge which you get for meeting a Stack Overflow
employee at an event. You can click any badge representing a given quality (quick to act,
conscientious, helpful) which you think would be useful in the position and see users who
were awarded this badge.
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How to use tags and synonyms for sourcing on Stack Overflow
It’s obvious that most tech recruiters are not proficient in the skills they are trying to recruit for
and that’s where Stack Overflow tags and synonyms come to the rescue.
Content posted on Stack Overflow is organized by means of tags which makes it easy to
browse. You can use tags in a couple of ways:
1. Discover the top skills of any candidate by looking at top tags in their profile,
2. Use tags for X-ray searching and iterative searching on other platforms.
There are a number of ways to access Tags – here’s one of them:
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1. Click “Tags” in the upper menu,
2. In the “Tags” section, enter your keyword in the search box to look for any required skill
(i.e. “python”). Click the master tag appearing at the top of the list,
3. You will see questions tagged with your tag. Click “Synonyms” in the menu,
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4. You can now see the synonyms to be used in your searches,
5. You can also use related tags.
The best thing about Stack Overflow tags is that they can be used outside of the platform and
they can save you a lot of googling. Remember Glen Cathey’s iterative search we discussed in
the chapter “How to source software developers from LinkedIn”?
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Source: YouTube
Glen Cathey says he uses Google to see if there’s a correlation but you can also consult
Stack Overflow tags, synonyms and related tags for support.
How to cross reference profiles
In user profiles, you can see a list of personal details users choose to disclose, like their Twitter,
GitHub profile and website. You can try to Google the username and in many cases this will
help. Another way is to go to the website provided and check the “About” section or its whois
data. There are also plugins which can help you do that like 360Social.
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Why sourcing from Stack Overflow and LinkedIn is different
Think about it this way – LinkedIn is centered around career opportunities and building
a strong professional image so the presence of recruiters is natural and solicited.
Stack Overflow is a developer Q&A site designed for solving problems and learning, neither of
which happens through recruiters joining the platform. Now, let’s make an educated guess and
say that if more seasoned Stack Overflow users tend to be hostile towards beginners, they’re
probably not very open to people who:
a) Can’t code and can’t contribute as a consequence,
b) Come from a group which constantly gets bad rep.
In other words, LinkedIn is a much more natural environment for recruiters because they
get to build their personal brand there, publish content and generally do things to present
themselves in a positive way. Their activity on LinkedIn is therefore twofold: they get to build
their personal brand and look for candidates to fill open positions. On Stack Overflow that’s
not really the case because the only reason you’re there is to recruit.
You’re basically a non-developer in a developer community.
Check out this interesting Quora thread discussing the experience with Stack Overflow Jobs.
The expectations are really high. Chris Jester-Young with 150k+ rep on Stack Overflow says
that when it comes to messages from recruiters on Stack Overflow Careers, LinkedIn, and
email “the ones I really pay attention to are ones written by ‘real’ people, like programmers and
Engineering VPs and CTOs (and in one recent case, CEO).”
Again, that only tells you this: average doesn’t cut it anymore, you need to educate yourself to
become a good tech recruiter.
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You have to know what software engineers want and offer that to them. Here are the top two
nuggets of information from the 2016 Stack Overflow Developer Landscape report:
1. Salary (62.68%), work/life balance (50.41%) and company culture (41.78%) are the top
three most important aspects of a new job opportunity.
Source: Stack Overflow
2. Learning new technologies (70.06%), building something new (64.26%), and having
control over product decisions (44.13%) are most important for software engineers
at work.
Source: Stack Overflow
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Best practices
Leverage your developer team and their Stack Overflow presence
In the company page and job ads, there are photos and profile links of current employees (of
course you need permission from your staff to do that).
This serves as a trust signal because Stack Overflow members can access these profiles and see
the types of questions they add to get a feeling what they’re doing professionally.
Encourage your team to be active and contribute
Your employees are like your storefront – if they provide valuable contributions and are happy
to represent your brand, they are likely to attract the sort of attention you need.
Get exposure for your tech brand
Your company page allows you to share updates about your brand and present it to potential
candidates. Remember what developers care about at work? Make sure the content you
present there is timely and relevant to their interests. Remember to always list your tech stack.
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Is it scalable?
According to the 2016 Stack Overflow Developer Survey, only 2.8% of survey respondents
found a job on Stack Overflow – you shouldn’t get your hopes up. 13.8% of them reported being
contacted by an external recruiter, and 9.5% by an in-house recruiter.
Source: Stack Overflow
Findings of 2016 Stack
Overflow Landscape
suggest only 1.72%
learned about the
position on Stack
Overflow and 25% of
them discovered the
opportunity “through
a recruiter of some sort”.
Source: Stack Overflow
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Are you going to get hundreds of leads and reply messages? Probably not, and that’s a good
thing because you don’t want to spam people who don’t fit the job description.
Thanks to information available on Stack Overflow, you can target the right person. With all
certainty, a lot of recruiters mentioned in the survey look at Stack Overflow and GitHub
activity of their candidates during the recruitment cycle. They do it because they know that
when it comes to sourcing from Stack Overflow, quality makes up for quantity.
X-ray searching Stack Overflow
...is blocked to a large extent. Some searches which used to work like this one from
Boolean Black Belt no longer return results:
site:stackoverflow.com/users xcode iOS (“location * california” | “location * san francisco” |
“location * bay area” | “location * CA”)
Some searches do work – for example, you can see all users in Google
site:stackoverflow.com/users or search users with a given skill:
site:stackoverflow.com/users jdk OR jre OR j2se OR java (source: Sourcing & Recruitment Info)
Stack Exchange Data Explorer
No need for tissues and ice cream therapy (Häagen Dazs for the win, in case you ever need ice
cream therapy). There’s another way to find what you need.
Luckily for us, Stack Overflow data is available for free on Stack Exchange Data Explorer.
Developer Shane Gryzko wrote a very helpful post on how you can use the data explorer.
Shane recommends using an SQL query he prepared himself. All you need to do is type in any
location and any valid tag in the search menu:
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The results you get are clickable so you can access profile users directly from the tool.
Remember to look for contact details in Stack Overflow profiles but try not contact devs
directy via Stack Overflow due to house policy rules. According to Johnny Campbell, CEO of
SocialTalent, when you do reach out elsewhere, you should use simple language and keep it
short (50-125 words per message).
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The game is too serious for you to rely on luck or chance. Given the level of competition,
you need to know all the data on your target group by heart and draw conclusions.
There’s no more room for guessing or making up for the quality of leads with bulk emails,
especially on Stack Overflow. Think before you act – it’s really easy to get your privileges
revoked and your reputation tarnished.
Self-Assessment
1.
Are you present on Stack Overflow? If you are, do you have
a company profile there or do you use your personal profile?
2.
What do you use Stack Overflow for?
3.
What is your monthly Stack Overflow budget for recruitment
purposes?
4.
How many of your tech hires from the last 12 months come from
Stack Overflow?
5.
How is Stack Overflow different from LinkedIn? Why do you need
to be more careful?
6.
Do you abide by all house rules listed by Stack Overflow?
7.
Have you spoken to your developers about leveraging their
Stack Overflow presence for recruitment purposes?
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Chapter 7:
How to source
software developers
from GitHub
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Because career-specific sites like LinkedIn are inundated with recruiter mail,
most software developers are skeptical of them to put it mildly. In order to keep
your tech talent pipeline full, you need to be where software engineers are, and
GitHub is definitely one of the best places. In this chapter, we explain how to
source software developers from GitHub.
When it comes to hiring software developers, you can leverage GitHub in a number of ways:
1 . Source candidates by means of finding projects which correspond with what you do,
2 . Evaluate the quality of code based on publicly available projects candidates are
currently working on. Bear in mind you’ll still need a programming test later in the process
for a reliable assessment of their coding skills,
3. Find email addresses of people you’re interested in. Bear in mind you cannot email
people inside GitHub, but many users provide their email addresses which you can see
either in profile information or directly in search results.
A word of caution is necessary at this point: if you’re a recruiter on GitHub, you need to make
sure you’re on your best behaviour. Why? GitHub brings together great developers who are
contacted by recruiters left, right and centre, which they’re not very happy about.
Here’s an example which popped up in the first couple of searches:
Watch. Yourself.
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What is
?
GitHub is a repository hosting service for Git where developers share open-source projects
they’re working on. It was launched in April 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath,
and PJ Hyett. The name comes from Git Revision Control System which tracks changes from
original code in a given piece of code.
The code host gives the opportunity to showcase projects, talent and skills and there’s very
little room for written descriptions. On GitHub, code speaks for itself which is good news for
recruiters because you get to see practical applications of people’s skills.
The way GitHub works directly impacts how you should search for tech talent in the platform.
It’s packed to the gills with active developers who share their projects, so there’s a lot of
potential when it comes to hiring. You just need to know what to look for.
GitHub glossary
If you’re not a techie, you may feel slightly confused when you start using GitHub mostly
due to the terminology used on the platform. Here’s a quick explanation of most frequently
used terms:
Commit: revision; an individual change to the file.
Forking: copying projects from other users with the aim of using the code
yourself. Forks are personal copies of another user’s repository which live in
your account. It’s possible to make changes to forks without affecting the original
project. Attention: Stars and forks are a sign of good, usable code.
Pull request: Thanks to pull requests, you get to tell other users about changes
you’ve made in their GitHub repository. When you submit a pull request, you ask
the author to update their project with your changes.
Repository: open-source development projects the person has chosen to host on
GitHub, plus projects they’ve copied (“forked”).
These terms should make it easier for you to move around GitHub. If you need more,
you can access their full glossary here.
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The anatomy of a GitHub profile
As GitHub say in their Help section, “your profile page tells people the story of your work
through the repositories you’re interested in, the contributions you’ve made, and the
conversations you’ve had.”
GitHub profiles include the following info:
• Name,
• Repositories owned or contributed to,
• Date joined,
• Repositories started,
• Location,
• Stars (quick reminder: good code is
• Website/websites,
forked and starred a lot, so pay
• Number of followers,
attention to these elements),
• Personal email address (optional),
• Contribution calendar (you might be
• Bio (including @mentions and emojis),
tempted to think it’s useless for you,
• Organizations (including ones you’ve
but read on to find out why you should
previously worked for),
• Projects you’ve contributed to,
• A timeline of important highlights
(joining GitHub, opening first pull request etc.),
like it A LOT).
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To access repositories of the person, click “Repositories” in the bar menu and choose from the
dropdown list.
While code listed as “Sources” is essentially code authored and hosted on GitHub by this
person, code listed as “Forks” is basically code copied from someone else that this person
found valuable and copied to use for themselves.
Looking at the code authored and forked gives you an idea of what they’re currently working
on as well as their level of expertise.
You can also follow promising candidates and watch projects you find interesting.
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How to search for candidates on GitHub
When it comes to searching, there are two rules listed by GitHub:
• Your search queries cannot be longer than 256 characters,
• You must limit your queries to five AND, OR, or NOT operators.
Here’s what you need to do:
1 . Create a free account,
2 . Use the top search bar....
...and advanced search you can find here:
Here’s what it looks like:
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On GitHub people aim to present their projects and not themselves like it is the case on
LinkedIn. Because of the nature of the platform, you shouldn’t search by job titles but use
industry-specific keywords like programming languages. This way, you get to identify candidates
through code they keep in their repositories or in repositories of someone else they contribute to.
As an example, when you run a simple “python” search, these are the results that you see:
a ) in the “Repositories” tab:
b ) in the “Users” tab, you see people who used the word “Python” in various context,
including these with the word “python” in their bio or email address.
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However, if you run a “language:python” search, you get more results:
Interestingly, the number of results varies significantly for these two search queries:
“Python”
vs
“language:python”
Repositories: 555K vs. 2M
Issues: 1M vs. 7M
Users: 25K vs. 776K
As you can see, simple searches don’t return satisfactory results so it’s better to use advanced
search parameters like language, location and number of followers.
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Searching by language, location and number of followers
For the purpose of tech recruitment, the most important parameters for searching GitHub are:
1 . Language
2 . Location
3 . Followers
Here’s an example of a search looking for a London-based Python proficient software
developer using the query “language:python location:london”:
You can also search by using country names and abbreviations:
language:python location: “united kingdom” (1,139 users at the time of writing this ebook).
In this case, you need to remember about quotation marks because location is a free text field.
language:python location:uk (3,356 users at the time of writing this ebook).
No need for quotation marks in location in this case.
You can also narrow your search results by adding more information, like the number of
followers your candidate should have.
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This is how you can identify Python proficient software developers based in London with more
than 60 followers.
“language:python location:london followers:>60”
Use this syntax to find candidates with the desired number of followers:
• followers:>10 – users with more than 10 followers,
• followers:5..50 – users with between 5 and 50 followers,
• followers:<75 – users with less than 75 followers.
Another cool GitHub search tip is to change your parameters directly in the url:
All you need to do is change the language name of location name directly in the URL in your
browser, which saves a lot of time and effort.
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Finding email addresses
There are two places where you can find email addresses:
1 . Search results:
2 . Profile bio:
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Alternatively, some users provide their websites in the bio section and you can find their
contact details directly on their sites.
There used to be a hack with an API link which could show the email addresses of all users but
the method no longer works.
Searching commits of a given candidate
You can find commits authored or committed by your candidate by using one of the following
search commands:
• author:defunkt returns all commits authored by @defunkt,
• committer:defunkt returns all commits committed by @defunkt.
Finding good repositories
Like we said earlier, good code gets forked and starred a lot. Here’s how you can find frequently
forked repositories (and more importantly for us, the users who created them).
• forks:5 repositories with five forks only,
• forks:>=205 repositories with at least 205 forks,
• forks:<90 repositories with fewer than 90 forks,
• forks:10..20 repositories with 10 to 20 forks.
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Sorting your search results
Results are matched by “Best match” by default and you can change your sort options in the
drop down menu:
The “best match” ordering gives you people who have coded the most in the language you’ve
specified in the search criteria and who are nearest to the location you’ve provided.
You can also order your results by number of repositories, most followers, or most/last
recently joined.
X-ray searching GitHub
Unfortunately GitHub profile URLs don’t have a specific indicator telling you (and Google) that
the site is a profile page. This makes X-ray searching slightly more difficult but still doable.
There’s a way around this because you can search for elements which are present only in
user profiles, like the contribution calendar. One such element is this search recommended by
Vince Szymczak:
site:github.com “contributions in the last year”
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Genius, right?
It works because of the phrase used here:
Similar to regular searches, you can use the language and location details in your X-ray search.
To do so, simply add the information you need to the string without quotation marks. It should
look like this:
site:github.com “contributions in the last year” python london
You can use a number of parameters, including the phrase “gmail.com”.
site:github.com “San Francisco” “gmail.com”
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Searching for code
Sadly, you’re not allowed to use qualifiers on their own in code searches – it makes very little
sense for GitHub to allow a feature where programmers get to search for code from their
location. The solution is to search by “function, a short piece of example code the future hire
will work with, and might currently use as well”. You can get this information for your Hiring
Manager and use it to find users who created it.
Let’s look at the “float invsqrt language:C++” search suggested by Szymczak to illustrate how
this works (please note you can only see search results when logged in):
The problem with this is that you search for fragmentary nuggets of coding wisdom which
don’t guarantee the person who knows them is a good developer.
If you need more help on searching GitHub, read this GitHub guide on search syntax.
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Best behaviour
You really should know this, but given the bad reputation tech recruiters get, let’s just say it
again: be sure to respect people’s boundaries. When you go through search results, you get
to come across all types of information, including “no recruiters” claims in the bio section like
you’ve seen above.
This feels kind of similar to Stack Overflow where you’re not very welcome as a recruiter.
If you’re on your best behaviour you should be fine, but the first rule is to respect
people’s boundaries.
Remember:
• NEVER email people if they say they don’t want you to,
• ALWAYS respect their boundaries,
• CROSS-REFERENCE profiles in other platforms, including Stack Overflow,
LinkedIn, and Twitter,
• DO YOUR HOMEWORK before you email your candidate. Dig into their
Stack Overflow and GitHub profiles to get an idea of what they’re doing and try
to start conversation with that piece of information in mind,
• BE SPECIFIC when you decide to reach out. Don’t offer “a couple of cool
opportunities” but provide all the necessary information like salary, location,
job title.
Sourcing from sites like GitHub allows you to get off the beaten track and discover talent
that isn’t on everybody’s radar. You can use the data available on the platform in a number
of ways, including lead discovery; verification of skills, levels and expertise; finding a topic of
conversation; and finally acquiring the contact details.
When you decide to reach out remember you should aim to build relationships and not spam
people with vague job offers. Instead, talk to people about their work, even if they’re not
looking for a new job opportunity at the moment. This type of relationships pays off in the
future, as 61% of developers “are open to new opportunities without actively looking for them”.
Make sure that when they are ready for a change, you come to their mind as the recruiter who
didn’t contact them “with a couple of cool opportunities”.
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Self-Assessment
1.
Are you present on GitHub?
2.
What do you use GitHub for?
3.
Are you familiar with platform-specific vocabulary (i.e. forks,
pull requests, commits)?
4.
Do you use advanced GitHub searching options? If you are, which
ones do you use while sourcing?
5.
Which GitHub’s features do you find most valuable for sourcing
purposes?
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Chapter 8:
The best tools for
sourcing technical
talent
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IT sourcing takes a great deal of your time. Of course as a technical recruiter you
have your tips and tricks, proven methods and techniques that work and let you
find the best leads but there is always a room for improvement. That’s why we
looked for sourcing tools that can improve your recruitment process.
There are a couple of social recruiting tools, also called social aggregators which on the one
hand utilize social connections to make it easier to find candidates, and on the other crawl
social profiles, compile rich candidate profiles from candidate activity across the Web and
social media. This lets IT recruiters see skills, abilities, passions, and creativity at a glance
rather than after hours (or days) of search and communications. These tools also provide
the contact information of candidates which is another time saver for IT recruiters in the
sourcing stage.
Have a look at these sourcing tools and check them out. They’ve helped many IT recruiters
improve their sourcing process.
Social recruiting and sourcing tools (social aggregators)
360social
360social is a browser plugin allowing you to analyze the full social footprint of people you
want to connect with directly in your browser. The plugin is especially useful for recruiters
because you get to “see everything about anyone” without having to run multiple searches
across platforms. Verified profile information including profile pictures, skills, links to social
media, email addresses and phone numbers are presented in a simple sidebar. The free version
of the plugin covers 140+ social networks.
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Entelo
Entelo software platform leverages big data, predictive analytics, and social signals to help
recruiting organizations find, qualify, and engage with talent. It offers 2 modules: outbound
and inbound recruiting. Entelo pulls in candidates and relevant work experience from
many sources online into one place (eg. from GitHub, Dribbble, Quora, Twitter, and more).
They also offer a kind of “listening” function which helps you track what’s happening with
passive candidates you’ve targeted.
Hired
Hired delivers a curated pool of responsive candidates, so you can spend less time sourcing and
more time interviewing and hiring. Hired is a career marketplace for the world’s knowledge
workers with a great pool of tech professionals and programmers. They’re bringing together
job seekers and the companies who want to hire them. Employers get access to a hand-picked
pool of candidates who are interested in new roles with an unmatched transparency into
competing offers so they can recruit and hire with insight. The end result is an efficient,
effective and enjoyable experience that’s far faster than traditional methods.
HiringSolved
HiringSolved makes it faster and easier to find the right person for any job. This people
aggregator gathers data from across the web and filters the most relevant ones.
HiringSolved describes itself as “Google for talent”. This platform makes it easy to find
people to hire: it finds and combines data from many sources including resumes, websites,
social profiles, forum posts, and contact information to create a HiringSolved profile.
HiringSolved’s mission is to find everyone and make the information easy to search in a fast,
usable interface.
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Open Web from Dice
Dice facilitates connections with IT professionals by combining a rich database of resumes
with their social recruiting tool Open Web, which uncovers passive candidates, accelerates
your hiring, and delivers the best talent to organizations. Open Web makes tech recruiting
easier by bringing together social data from 130 sites that matter most and presenting the
data in a way that’s simple to act on. It’s a big data platform made for busy tech recruiters.
Recruit’em
Recruit’em is an interesting social recruiting tool that helps recruiters search for candidates
on LinkedIn, Google+, Stack Overflow, GitHub, XING and Twitter. Recruit’em writes complex
Boolean Search Strings for you. Google Search can be a powerful tool to pinpoint the kinds
of social profiles you’re looking for—but anything beyond a simple query can become a real
challenge. This is where Recruit’em can be of great help for IT sourcers and recruiters.
For more tips on how to use it effectively just check out the Recruit’em User Guide.
Sourcing.io
Sourcing.io helps identify the best software engineers for your company with millions of
engineers indexed. You can browse and filter the data to find the perfect hire. It also takes
social recruiting into account so your team can use its existing network to find engineers
as the best candidates often come through referrals. Sourcing.io surfaces all of the
people connected to your team on networks like GitHub, Bitbucket and other developer
communities like Stack Exchange to mine top developers with the highest credibility.
Since December 2015, it’s become part of Underdog.io.
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SwoopTalent
SwoopTalent is a subscription-based sourcing platform which semantically searches a range
of social platforms to identify, match and rank quality passive candidates for recruiters.
SwoopTalent integrates all of your private, valuable data together, and links it accurately with
all of the data available on the Internet. Then it uses social networks of employees to connect,
reference check and refer these candidates for faster, more effective hiring.
TalentBin from Monster
TalentBin facilitates talent acquisition by offering a one-stop search shop for recruiters and
hiring managers to find suitable candidates. It is the talent search engine for the entire Web.
It helps you find passive candidates where they are active online based on their skills, interests
and actions. Integration: TalentBin also lets you sync/push profiles to your ATS/Recruiting
platform, as well as use the TalentBin search function from inside your recruiting platform.
Social referral tool
Reppify
Reppify is a social referral platform, aggregating the professional connections of your
company’s employees to redefine the traditional model of talent IT sourcing and lead generation.
Reppify helps companies achieve results and growth in referral hiring while reducing overall
recruiting spend and increasing candidate quality. Referrals have been proven to show the
lowest cost/hire and fastest sourcing method, 30% lower termination rates, and 25% more
profitability than any other source of hire.
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IT sourcing from colleges
Piazza careers
Piazza is one of the largest social learning and recruiting platforms for technical students.
Piazza is a college collaboration and recruiting platform that has all the top technical students
around the world engaged for 3+ hours a night. Currently, the college collaboration platform
serves over 1 million students on an annual basis and the recruiting platform connects
hundreds of the top companies around the world with these students.
Self-Assessment
1.
How many tools do you use during the entire recruitment process?
2.
What is your monthly tool-related budget?
3.
Which of the tools do you use on a regular basis?
4.
What is the biggest bottleneck in the process? Is there a tool
to help you relieve it?
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Conclusion
Data shows we’re all currently circling around the same talent pools
which makes IT hiring a highly competitive space.
We all use LinkedIn and send messages day in, day out and we use the same tools
and methods while we work. Yet, we expect to be the ones to succeed, but do
we really know what the people we’re trying to hire want and how they like to be
approached?
More than ever in the history of HR, recruiters need to get off the beaten track
and educate themselves about the current state of tech hiring. As a recruiter,
it is your duty to know current statistics and be able to effectively search
developer-specific platforms like GitHub or Stack Overflow. It’s not about being
able to recall the stats or search commands for the sake of it. It’s all about using
this knowledge to your advantage in order to outperform your competitors.
If you haven’t already, we urge you to read the first ebook from Devskiller
Tech Recruitment Certification Course entitled “IT recruitment process that works”.
The next step to grow your career
as a recruiter (and your company)
is to get certified and start reaping
benefits from what you’ve learned.
Devskiller is a powerful tool for testing developers
skills through programming tasks, with a strong
focus on applied knowledge.
It allows you to accelerate your tech hiring based on
coding tests which mirror your candidate’s 1st day
at work.
Time to get serious.
Get Tech Recruitment certified now and prove your value for the employer.
Start hiring the best developers out there, every time.
Get Certified
devskiller.com
Questions?
Email us at hrcertification@devskiller.com