“They like me. They really, really like me.”
When was the last time you thought that about a candidate? You may be missing out on people responding to your moves to get them in the company if you’re overlooking their inconspicuous, low-key gestures.
Check out these signals a candidate likes what you’ve got to offer.
In my past career as a software engineer, I had numerous interactions with technical recruiters. I was placed several times, by agency recruiters, with start-ups and bio-tech companies here in the Bay Area.
Most of you are familiar with my posts and webinars on how to source. This post is different – it reflects my experience interacting with recruiters from the software engineering side.
Here are my eight tips for technical recruiters.
…and very likely could have!
Practice may make perfect, but if luck runs out and the $2,500 cash prize for winning the World’s Greatest Sourcer slips through your fingers, runner-up is still pretty sweet.
We previously came up with the official WGS reading collection, but adding 26 books to a growing reading list may feel ambitious for any talent pro. We asked Shally, “If you could take any 10 books with you to a deserted island, what would they be?”
Here’s what he told us.
One of the common misconceptions many companies have is that they can’t compete against the Googles and Facebooks of the world when it comes to inbound flow of candidates.
While it’s certainly true companies of that scale have far more exposure to good candidates, too many companies, especially early-stage startups, put all their eggs into other avenues such as sourcing, referrals and agencies. This strategy can work, but it’s a huge missed opportunity to avoid investing in developing those inbound funnels. Fortunately, there are some strategies for building a strong inbound pipeline that a few companies have played to perfection.
A recruiter who’s good at recruiting doesn’t cut it anymore.
New tools and tech may be perpetually emerging to spot even the most covert candidates, but likewise, an increasing number of skilled people are finding alternate ways to communicate their abilities, get their resumes under more recruiters’ eyes, or to hide from them.
To make any hire these days, the modern recruiter has to think and behave like the modern candidate.
Check out these four knacks and hacks to look for when building your all-star hiring team.
Reading resumes, job descriptions, and candidate requirements may be part of the job, but if you’re looking for a change of scene, we have just the thing to one-up your hiring game.
We spoke with The Sourcing Institute President Shally Steckerl to get his list of must-reads for talent pros determined to change, improve, and learn the ins and outs of effective outreach, engagement, and hiring.
What we came up with is the official World’s Greatest Sourcer collection of 26 books that should be sitting on your nightstands, packed in your work bag, marked up and tagged on your desk, passed off to every recruiter you know – you get the idea. Here’s the grand list.
By now, we hope your Rolodex is collecting dust in a box somewhere.
Old and new school recruiters may be at a constant battle over cold-calling, social recruiting, video interviewing, and mass messaging, but there are timeless sourcing practices keeping all talent pros from finding and hiring their ideal candidates.
Avoid these five hiring flubs to expand the pool of people fit for your company.
Still evaluating talent based on their alma mater? Among other outdated methods of qualifying talent, these passé practices taper a funnel that could easily fit several people who are likely frequently overlooked by other companies, too.
Identifying these candidates in the wild may take a little extra poking and digging, but we had a chat with a few recruiters and hiring managers to learn which traits in their best employees are turned a blind eye to the most.
Our crystal ball for predicting trends for the next year told us to check back later, so we asked our recruiting pros for tips on getting ready for another year of hiring. We talk a lot about hitting the ground running – here’s even more NOS to get your team going.
Ask anyone in the workforce about their ideal career timeline and you’ll find the concept of the strong, linear job path no longer exists. The times they are a-changin’, and if there’s one group of candidates potentially getting the short end of the stick, it’s the talent pool you’ve neglected and rejected – the job hoppers and the resumes you’ve dumped straight to the can.
Even the best recruiters and hiring managers lack the incredible ability to decide on a candidate on their first pass. Flair and gifts aside, it’s unrealistic.
While there isn’t a magical formula for reducing your time-to-hire, companies can fine-tune their knack for bringing in candidates who are qualified and excited about the company by refining their methods for sorting out and ranking potential hires.
Read on for tips on improving your team’s ability to manage a more selective talent funnel to bring in more candidates who are interested and qualified for your opportunities.
A few birds, one stone? Try using the candidate interview as a platform for finding hires to fill your open reqs and to leverage your talent’s networks to make even more connections.
Here’s a tag line we’ll try to coin: If you’re not using your network, you’re losing your net worth. In other words, recruiters, if you’re not curious enough to comb through deepest trenches of your network and your network’s networks, someone else will be, running the risk of losing out on undiscovered qualified talent.
Build your connections and measure someone’s qualification for the role by poking around during the candidate interview. Try these questions to start:
Hiring designers is just as complex as hiring engineers.
Where there are twists, there are turns. Where there are umbrellas, there are terms, and calling someone a “designer” is as nondescript as calling last night’s dinner date “nice.” You get the idea.
Depending on the industry you work in, you’re likely hardly recruiting someone who’s labeled as just a designer. There are product designers, game designers, UI/UX designers, illustrators, visual designers, web designers, interactive designers, to name a few and then some.
The process for filling an open req for the company’s creative-engineering roles doesn’t start with understanding what types of interview questions to ask, or key factors to look for in a resume – it’s taking a top-down approach and understanding how to answer:
What business goals does the company want to achieve? What type of designer is the company looking for?
We feel your pain.
Hiring engineers isn’t easy and recruiters run into a combination of these typical snags in the hiring process: A candidate is already employed, not interested in switching jobs, or not interested in hearing about a new role.
Or perhaps you got a preview of their background and find nothing else to help you qualify them for the opportunity. In our webinar on recruiting engineers, Loni Spratt shared her tips and techniques for sourcing on some of tech’s largest networks, including GitHub – but what do you do when a candidate is a little more private with their work?
We’re nearing the end of 2014, and while some teams may be ramping up their hiring with newfound allowance to spend, others are doing just the opposite.
Hiring freezes happen after a piece of the budget pie’s been cut smaller than expected, or when managers realize they don’t need to hire for certain roles now, but perhaps at the start of the new year.
No matter the reason, putting a hold on your hiring doesn’t mean your talent acquisition strategy needs to be a halt, too. Build out your pipeline in the meantime and focus on these three areas to hit the ground running as soon as you get the go.
