Scott Rothrock is the co-founder and CTO of RemarkableHire, a talent-sourcing platform that uses social evidence to help recruiters and hiring managers find and evaluate the best job candidates. Connect with him and the RemarkableHire team on Facebook and Twitter.
Finding top-notch technical talent can be hard. But are we experiencing a shortage of qualified candidates, or are brilliant minds simply being overlooked? Traditional recruiting methods just don't cut it in terms of finding highly skilled candidates anymore, and companies may be to blame for their less-than-brazen use of these hiring techniques.
Top tech candidates are out there. So, how do you find and hire top talent?
1. Get serious about seeking talent. While companies say they are looking for the next "game-changing" employee, they certainly aren't updating their selection processes to do so. Journalist George Anders, author of The Rare Find: How Great Talent Stands Out, observes the incredible shortcomings of companies who rely on conservative selection processes -- and end up narrowing their criteria to such a degree that they often miss candidates with unusual potential.
Anders explains that wise leaders shouldn't expect exceptional talent to come in a neat package. Companies should be scouring the market for candidates with resilience and creativity, while keeping traditional skills, such as work ethic and reliability, in view.
Employers should consider finding talent through methods that are as unique as the candidates they're seeking. Facebook's strategy of using online programming puzzles to test and attract new talent stands out as a great example. These forms of tests offer an alternative route for those who might initially be overlooked during an application process.
There's no doubt that hiring managers and recruiters are serious about the hiring process. But their hiring methods sometimes take too few creative liberties, and therefore pass up serious talent. While the resume was once the mainstay of the HR industry, for instance, you're likely to miss candidates with serious potential if your hiring process relies solely on resumes.
In this day and age, many of the top tech candidates spend much more of their time honing their craft than they do honing their resume
In this day and age, many of the top tech candidates spend much more of their time honing their craft than they do honing their resume.
2. Recruit to train. Let's face it: Not all employers are blameless for the talent recruitment struggles they're facing. Peter Cappelli, a professor and author who recently wrote, Why Good People Can't Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It, presents a possible solution for this issue. Cappelli argues that companies need to return to the ancient way of doing things -- focus on recruiting talented people, and train them to be the skilled employees you wanted all along.
With the unemployment rate at 7.9%, business leaders are still complaining about the shortage of qualified candidates. These same leaders' companies offer job descriptions with an impossible number of requirements, and then use software to filter through thousands of applications. The talent search is doomed from the start when there are precise words needed to alert the applicant-tracking software that a candidate should get through the gates and into an interview.
The tech industry should not be forcing applicants to apply through automated resume screening tools. Put more emphasis on a candidate's core abilities to learn and adapt rather than being overly precise on a given skill set. If you focus on foundational competencies and professional athleticism, you'll be able to look at a broader pool of qualified candidates and maybe even find the talent that your competitors might have overlooked.
3. Go niche. Social communities revolving around specific areas of interest -- such as GitHub, Dribbble and StackOverflow, for example -- exist for every nook and cranny of the tech industry. Use these to attract talent looking for specific jobs rather than post on a generic job board, where your listing can easily be lost or overlooked. Not only can you assess candidates' qualities even before the first interview and find out if their area of expertise is consistent with yours, but you can also create and build a network of potential candidates to look at when you have other openings.
As more and more tech candidates contribute to these online, peer-reviewed communities, recruiters can get deeper, more objective appreciations for the candidates' core competencies. By using this information, you can rank candidates based on how well they've demonstrated the core set skills you're looking for, and save time that would otherwise have been spent in screening interviews. Because of the way many of these niche communities are designed, you'll be able to see actual examples of candidates' expertise rather than bullet point descriptions of their skills.
Don't stand in your own way of finding the tech talent you need; take advantage of these tips to set your organization apart, and find a perfect match.
What is your company doing to find and attract top tech talent? Tell us in the comments.
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Application Developer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY
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