The tech hiring market has changed dramatically in the past few years. Now, there are approximately 12.4 million people employed by the tech industry in the U.S, and there will be approximately 245,500 net new jobs this year. The tech market is booming, but there is no shortage of job seekers.
From May 2019 to May 2020, Forrester’s estimated 60,000 new tech industry jobs were created. The fact that so many companies had to accommodate remote work and therefore focus on more cloud-based business models, meant that businesses had a much greater need for data science. In the aforementioned year-long period, data science positions increased by 94%.
The tech job market shifted under everyone’s feet, and you need to look at the market with a new perspective to succeed. Does your process really take advantage of the new opportunities now available to you? Does it accommodate the ways great tech candidates really want to work? Take a hard look at your process and implement these strategies to find the best talent.
It’s not easy to source great tech candidates in this hiring environment. To do so, you need strategies that can adapt to new circumstances, here are some tips to help you succeed: Click To TweetTake Advantage of the Larger Talent Pool
Due to COVID-19, many companies were forced to embrace remote work and flexibility. Businesses had to make sure they could support their current employees as they transitioned to a new work environment. Now, many of those current employees are reluctant to turn back to traditional work models.
As companies seek to hire new employees, they’re encountering many individuals who aren’t interested in coming into the office every day. The tech industry especially has individuals who want to work from anywhere. Tech talent doesn’t want to live in the Bay area because it’s expensive. That doesn’t mean that the same individual will be reluctant to work for you.
If you embrace remote work and offer a flexible work environment, you greatly expand your talent pool.
Quick Tip: Encourage the companies you partner with to make their flexible work environment front and center in their Employment Value Proposition. This will allow you to broaden your search and approach candidates with the issues that worry them most from the very beginning.
Go Beyond LinkedIn
It’s hard to find the diamonds in the rough if you’re looking in the same places as everyone else. Every sourcer and recruiter is combing through LinkedIn, Indeed, and other job boards. To find unique candidates, you’ve got to locate niche talent pools.
Get creative. Think of the position you’re hiring for and look for any area where individuals exhibit the skill and expertise necessary to excel in that opening. Any niche job board or post is a potential resource for finding the spaces where knowledgeable discussion occurs.
In the past, we’ve identified candidates from Amazon Product Reviews, YouTube Comments, Open Source Communities, and Facebook groups. Go where the people are talking, even if you don’t feel like you’ll be able to find everything about that individual from that platform.
The best candidates are hard to find, and you can’t find them all in conventional locations. @EmeraldTalent has the techniques you need to find the best talent wherever it lives: Click To TweetCollate Sources and Create a Profile
The traditional sourcing professional loves LinkedIn because it’s all there. All of the information you need to create a complete professional profile is in one neat, tidy spot. But if we’ve already established that you need to check different places for great candidates, you may not have all of the info you need in one place.
Now, you’ve got to hit the proverbial pavement and collate multiple sources to create a three-dimensional professional profile of this candidate. If you see them leave an expert comment in a Facebook group, you may need to scour Facebook, Linkedin, and many other places to gain all the information you need.
As people go dark or create anemic profiles, you need to be clear on what you need to provide a hiring manager. Some of them just want to see “buzzword bingo,” but you can create more useful profiles if you can efficiently consolidate information from multiple sources.
Quick Tip: Develop a system for crafting a full profile. Know exactly what you need to gain a clear view of a candidate and communicate that with the hiring manager before you begin your search. Alignment on these characteristics is absolutely essential.
Consistently sourcing quality talent is difficult in any time period, but it’s especially hard in a time of significant change. The recruitment process, on the whole, is now moving into a new, hyper-modern era, and sourcers need to adapt their strategies to accommodate the new expectations and needs of all parties involved.
Achieving results now requires a flexible approach. You’ve got to understand that the talent pool is wide open, and the great candidates can come from anywhere. Search across the spectrum and don’t fall into the trap of one-stop-shopping. Once you find the individuals with the knowledge and skill, build out their profile across multiple sources to create a comprehensive view.
This approach can be varied and changed depending on the needs of the hiring manager and the specifics of the candidate. But no matter the circumstances, the right foundation leads to results.
For more information on strategies for sourcing great tech talent, please download the 5 Secrets to Sourcing Great Tech Talent.