Engage a Developer in Candidate Search and Save Thousands of Dollars — Here’s How It Works!

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Tech recruiting is not a piece of cake even for an experienced professional. The trick is that it’s not enough to master sourcing tools and learn how to call candidates and conduct interviews. Knowledge of the tech market structure is a must-have! Without that, recruiters may only memorize abbreviations and use Ctrl+F to find relevant phrases in resumes. Obviously, that’s not productive and negatively affects the work results.

However, the issue doesn’t come from recruiters. It is not enough to perceive a few lectures on IT terms or discuss tech work with a developer. Software engineers have no idea about the main search criteria and recruiters’ requests — and they really shouldn’t be aware of that. As for education for recruiters, even reliable courses won’t provide you with a profound understanding of libraries, languages, frameworks, app architecture and the connection between its elements. Lack of such knowledge hinders recruiters from making proper decisions when it comes to assessing the candidate’s hard skills.

For instance, your team needs to find a C++ Developer to create server software. Typically C++ is used for coding embedded and desktop applications. They differ greatly from server apps (one needs to know how to work with network protocols). This tiny thing is not commonly specified in job descriptions, as it’s obvious to software engineers and managers, though it may be mentioned in the detailed description of the project. Recruiters are not always aware of technologies that are basic for such projects. They may not even realize that it’s essential to clarify specifics before getting the ball rolling. However, ignoring technicalities might result in receiving loads of inappropriate resumes, as well as a waste of time on useless interviews and renegotiation of requirements.

How Do Recruiters Deal With This Issue?

Every product and outsourcing company has software developers and technicians filling vacancy briefs. Recruiters should ask them all the questions before starting their work on a vacancy. For example, you may ask:

• Will the company allocate resources for training a specialist, or will they immediately start handling tasks?
• What technologies will a new specialist use to complete their tasks?
• Are all the technologies listed in the job description currently being used? Which ones will be used later?

Having all these details at hand, a recruiter will understand which requirements are critical and secondary. It may be so that some “nice-to-have” technologies will facilitate product development in the future but are not must-haves now. As our experience shows, there are job descriptions, 3/4 of which consist of such requirements.

Unfortunately, you can’t just address tech specialists anytime you want. They may be overloaded or not aware of what requirements determine search criteria.

Recruiting agencies commonly face more difficulties. Agency specialists should be qualified enough and able to cope with the workload by default. Most often, recruiters work with 5–6 vacancies in two or more areas at the same time. Long story short, they should deeply understand all possible positions and technologies. Unfortunately, the real situation in the market is the opposite. Agencies often hire unskilled new employees, train them for several weeks and trust real — not always trivial — tasks. It may be the cause why clients receive irrelevant resumes and have to review job requirements several times.

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What Is Our Solution?

To cope with the challenge of finding perfect candidates for IT positions, we involve a developer in our recruiting teamwork. He analyzes the candidate market and the vacancy, as well as advises on possible options.

Saving time and money for the company is the key value of this solution. No joking — tens of thousands of dollars are spent on hiring, as software engineers have to agree on requirements, check resumes, and even conduct interviews. If a team lacks free developers, the business delays the development time and doesn’t receive profit.

Also, it is imperative to find a sufficient number of relevant specialists before candidates receive offers from competitor companies. When the recruiting process drags on, you can’t compare the most talented candidates for your position. You either keep searching and waste even more time or choose from the available people. Quick and correct selection is crucial in the competitive environment.

An in-house developer in the recruiting team can fine-tune the search and filter resumes so that the client gets only suitable candidates. As a result, the client doesn’t spend extra time on irrelevant candidates — and the likelihood of hiring increases.

At our agency, a technical specialist advises the client on how to close the position on time already at the stage of agreeing on requirements. They discuss the position complexity and the possibilities to narrow or expand the list of potential candidates.

To increase the market capacity, you can consider more frameworks similar in architecture and approaches. For instance, if you need a PHP specialist who works on Laravel, also consider CodeIgniter (the prototype of Laravel). Next, select developers who are ready to retrain within a short time.

When job requirements are too vague, narrow down the list of candidates — look for skills that will be useful in the future. Your in-house developer may offer options. Also, the architecture of already existing applications may determine these skills. If you need any Java Engineer who works with a microservice architecture, then it makes sense to look for Java + Spring Boot.

Also, an independent technician may notice inconsistencies in the requirements. Coordinating the job description with several experts may become a tough challenge. Everyone sees it differently and adds a few requirements, which turns the vacancy into a hard-to-fill position. This problem is not obvious, but once we know about it, we help companies decide whom they need to hire.

Let’s say a machine learning specialist can deal with both the applied part (implementation of algorithms in the app code) and theoretical issues (as a Scientist who selects the appropriate model or its parameters and is less involved in its implementation). For the first case, specify programming languages and frameworks; for the second — check the mathematical background and knowledge in the domain area. If these requirements get mixed, your vacancy will remain open forever.

Well, that’s just one solution that can make the recruiting process in IT more effective. You may ignore the details if there are several non-urgent vacancies. Anyway, if you are actively hiring and prefer to look at the recruiting plan from an aerial view, better know the pitfalls and possible issues. Figuring out how to deal with them in advance is always beneficial!