13 Sources That Can Make Talent Sourcing For Top Tech Roles A Cakewalk

13 Sources That Can Make Talent Sourcing For Top Tech Roles A Cakewalk

Gone are the days when interested candidates would walk into a company seeking employment based on their skill sets and get hired then and there. At the turn of this century, the job market experienced a drastic change. Today, recruiters have to get creative and go the extra mile to land a good fit for the job. Tech recruiting, in particular, with its vast scope and demand, makes talent sourcing even more challenging.

According to a LinkedIn study, 25% of candidates are active in their search for new opportunities. The number further shrinks down for tech talent with specialized skills and experience. This is where tech recruiting is unique, as it serves as a gateway into a disparate world- the world of coding, web development, IT professionals, frameworks and jargon that tend to intimidate even the most seasoned recruiters. The tech recruitment landscape continues to be competitive since almost every company is on the lookout for the best developer, coder, programmer and other technical job roles for OT professionals. But in this saturated job market, the availability of tech talent is way less than the available job openings. For better outreach, tech recruiters need to be proactive and be where your target candidates are. This enables recruiters to know them better & create sturdy talent pools of potential candidates that can be leveraged not just today, but later.

But where do you find the right software professionals? Here is a list curated by our team for top sources to find the right technical talent: 

Strategizing Talent Sourcing process for Tech Roles

Did you know that sourced candidates are two times more efficient than candidates who have applied for the job? That’s right, outbound recruitment is a proven method of delivering an organization’s hiring needs. Efficient sourcing in the recruitment process reduces the time-to-fill and builds a strong talent pipeline for future hiring needs. 

Collaborating with the hiring manager at the start of the sourcing process means that both the recruiter and the hiring manager are on the same page about what an ideal tech candidate looks like. This also helps recruiters use the appropriate techie language for job titles & job descriptions and write effective outreach messages to draw the attention of qualified candidates.

A common means of sourcing is to leverage employee referrals. Most organizations prioritize candidates who are referred by existing employees because they best understand what it is like to work at their organisation. This puts the employees in a better position to suggest a relevant candidate that would fit both the skill as well as the behavioural/culture-fit requirements. This way, recruiters can reach untapped passive candidates and also improve their response rate. The employees too, reap the benefits of the rewards assigned for each hire. For instance, if a software engineer enjoys working with your organization then the person is likely to share the positive experiences and the advantages of joining the organization with friends and acquaintances. 

Participating in job fairs, career fests, and hackathons are some offline methods of connecting with candidates. Recruiters can use these opportunities to showcase their organisational culture and values while also gauging the technical prowess of the candidates. These tried and tested methods of talent sourcing continue to yield some of the best tech hires. But in the technical recruitment landscape where the demand is high, the competition is cut-throat, and with limited qualified candidates, recruiters need to get creative with their methods of sourcing talents.

Talent Sourcing Channels for Tech Roles

A clever trick of tech talent sourcing is to be where the tech talent is. The awareness of where and how the target talents spend their time, learn and share knowledge, and socialize with like-minded people is a repository of unexplored candidates. This helps recruiters engage with, and source passive candidates possessing the skills and expertise required to fill in the job role you are looking for. 

Here are 13 innovative avenues of talent sourcing for top tech roles:

  1. LinkedIn and Facebook Groups

It is no surprise that your ideal candidates visit these social media sites almost every day. Convert these platforms into a source & community of candidates by leveraging their ‘groups’ feature. Both Linkedin & Facebook consist of various groups with a follower base specific to different technical skills, qualifications, and expertise. Tech recruiters can join these groups and be a part of the conversation and learn relevant trends in the IT space. Most of these groups also support job postings which help recruiters get in touch with new candidates. Recruiters can reach out to potential candidates through these groups without having to buy licensed/premium accounts.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of tech groups on social media you can be a part of to connect and source candidates.

LinkedIn Groups

IT Professionals

IT Computer Software and Hardware

Technology Jobs Network

Information Technology

Women in Technology International

Software as a Service – SaaS

Facebook Groups

Software Engineers

Computer Programmers

Mobile App Developers

Web Designers

UI/UX Designers

Data Scientists

  1. GitHub

As a tech recruiter, you may have heard about GitHub before but it is also important to make the most of it. With a strong base of over 40 million active users every month, GitHub is a web-based IT project hosting service. It is a subsidiary of Microsoft with features to collaborate and tools to share codes with other users. A candidate’s GitHub profile acts as their portfolio which can provide the recruiters with a sense of their technical competency. Technical recruiters can use this platform to inspect and shortlist candidates to create a talent pipeline for software developers. Here is a detailed guide for you to source candidates on GitHub.

  1. Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is an online question-and-answer forum for professionals as well as enthusiast coders and programmers with more than 20 million users. People from across the globe post technical questions and all the users are welcome to answer. The platform is equipped with a ranking system in which the reputation of the users grows based on the quality of their answers. This ranking system helps tech recruiters spot candidates and their strengths across the IT field. Similar to GitHub, Stack Overflow’s user profile becomes their portfolio with an in-depth view of the questions they have answered and how they gained reputation points, and their final rating. Each question can also be tagged into different categories which helps the recruiter understand the candidate’s area of interest and expertise. Learn to source the best technical talent on Stack Overflow here

  1. Dribbble and Behance 

Dribbble is an online community of digital designers and agencies who post their creative work and portfolio on this platform. Recruiters can search for designers with expertise in UI/UX with HTML5, WordPress, Illustrator, and Photoshop using the Dribbble search bar. The platform also provides an advanced search option to find people based on their skills and location. The ‘For Hire’ menu in the Designers section shows you who is on the lookout for a job. But these features are only available on the paid account at $20 per year. Dribbble also allows job posting with a fee starting at $400 per ad.

Behance, acquired by Adobe in 2012 is similar to Dribble,  a creative network of designers to showcase and discover creative work. Although Behance’s feature to add their work experience is what sets it apart from Dribbble. Besides, it also provides more free search bar filters like creative fields, location, qualifications, tools known, and more. This helps recruiters subscribe to the relevant criteria and connect with more suitable candidates with ease. Major companies like Facebook and Apple use Behance search to find quality designers. Behance and Dribble both have almost the same amount of starting fee for each job posting but Behance provides attractive discounts for bulk postings. Behance also suggests relevant candidates based on your recruitment criteria which can be used for future hiring campaigns.

  1. Quora

Quora is a Q&A platform with over 300 million active users per month and covers a wide array of topics. The questions asked on Quora are grouped into separate topics which the user can follow as per their interests. Tech recruiters can start by first looking for relevant tech topics like Java, Software Engineering, Computer Programming, Web Development etc. and follow the same. Each topic has a ‘most viewed’ and ‘top stories’ section from which the recruiter can identify suitable tech talents based on their answers and the votes their answers have received. The related topics list helps recruiters expand their search base providing a wider pool of talents to pick from. 

Another way you can use Quora to your advantage is to build your reputation as a recruiter or an attractive employer brand for the company. You can ask or answer questions regarding tech recruitment and increase your credibility as a genuine recruiter. Remember that Quora does not support job ads on their platform and any question or answer that may seem like a job posting might be reported and eventually deleted, damaging your credibility. That is why it is important to be authentic in drafting your questions and answers.

  1. Reddit

Reddit comprises many moderated forums called subreddits. The purpose of this platform is to share content, discuss ideas and issues, and ask questions based on the topic of the forum. Reddit has the biggest programming community with a whopping 4.8 million active users and covers conversations about all things programming. Recruiters can find similar technical subreddits to tap into this passive source of candidates but this process could be time-consuming. A simpler method to locate these forums is to run a simple Reddit or google search for, for example, ‘Reddit web developers’. After locating relevant forums you can explore them to identify suitable candidates. You can see the users’ profiles by entering this – u/<name> – in the Reddit search bar. Recruiters can directly reach out to them via the ‘send message’ option. Or they can go through their recent activities in the comment section where they may share their contact details. Redditors for hire and Jobbit and two forums where recruiters can post their job posting as well as view the profiles that are open to work.

Following are some of the technical forums recruiters can join to source tech talents:

Coding

Programming Languages

Developing Android Apps

Game Development

CS Career Questions.

  1. Slack

Slack is a communication service between employees but it is not limited to it. The users on this platform can also create interest-based groups/communities for informal professional communication. Recruiters can enter their email IDs and request access to these communities. They make the perfect source for recruiters to identify and reach out to candidates based on their professional interests and level of expertise. The recruiter can also take advantage of conversations in these communities to analyse the complaints, discussions, and ideas to draft an attractive business proposal.

Here are a few Slack communities you can join to source candidates.

TechMasters

iOS Developers

Data Quest

Holo Developers

Android United

  1. HackerNews

Hacker News centres around startups and the IT landscape. This site has different sections such as new, past, comment, show, ask jobs, and submit.

While all of these sections are self-explanatory, recruiters can make the most of learning the trends in the IT field. Another important feature of this platform is that recruiters can post job postings in the ask section and also explore the earlier conversation threads to pick out candidates that meet your requirements. Given its real-time updates, recruiters must check this site daily for the best results.

  1. Discord

Discord is an online platform meant for group chatting consisting of many channels called servers. Each server has its topic, rules, and categories. Amongst a wide array of servers, it also consists of some tech servers with skilled candidates and professionals all in one place. These servers are used to discuss various issues, ideas, and insights as well as post job ads. Discord has now become a popular platform to recruit top tech talents and great recruiters willing to go the extra mile to find the right candidates, must not miss out on finding them through discord. Recruiters can use resources such as Disforge and DiscordMe to save time and find a suitable candidate amidst many servers.

  1. Twitch

Twitch is known as a gaming platform but its growing popularity has led to varied kinds of streaming which help in creating an interest-based community. Twitch now consists of developers and tech streamers who conduct live coding sessions and share their work with their subscribers. But how does that help recruiters source better tech talents? Well, to begin with, recruiters can look for tech streamers using either language or technology-related keywords for the job roles. Recruiters can also find a pool of talent by going through the chat section of the live or recorded stream and identifying developers interested in the topic being discussed. Another way to source candidates on Twitch is to look into the development shows and communities such as DevWars. It is a coding game show where developers compete to code the best website in a given amount of time. This is a creative method of locating passionate tech talents and sourcing them for future hires. A good practice for recruiters would be to not reach out to them on the Twitch platform but to take efforts to locate them on other platforms such as LinkedIn or GitHub to reach out to them. This way the recruiter can also personalize their outreach messages and not get lost in their pool of messages.

  1. Telegram

Telegram is a messaging app with a huge number of users across devices and operating systems. The monthly active user consists of people from diverse cultures as well as locations. The development of new functionalities on telegram becomes an attractive feature to attract more users. This becomes a new means of sourcing potential candidates and catering to a wider audience. Recruiters can shortlist candidates from avenues such as Public and private channels/groups, Public and closed group chats, Comments sections, User profiles, Search engines, and External sources. These avenues consist of various channels that cater to tech and IT development. Since it is a messaging app, it can help recruiters explore candidates who are not accustomed to social media but are a part of these avenues on Telegram. This also helps recruiters personalize their outreach message and increase their response rate due to the convenience of reaching out via messenger service. 

  1. X-Ray/Boolean Search on Google

X-Ray or Boolean search is a sourcing technique that gives you specific results by inserting relevant keywords with Boolean operators in any search engine. With Google X-Ray search, recruiters can find CVs, portfolios, contact details, location, qualification, or experience-based talents using boolean operators like AND, NOT, OR, Brackets, and Quotation marks. 

For example, if you are looking for resumes of web developers in Mumbai, you will have to insert the following in Google search:

(intitle: cv Or resume OR vitae) web developer Mumbai -jobs –job

Tech recruiters can also conduct such X-Ray searches on platforms like GitHub, Stack Overflow, Reddit, LinkedIn and more. This helps them save time from screening a never-ending list of candidates and shortlisting targeted candidates. 

But it cannot be overlooked that running an X-ray search is not as easy as it may sound and takes time to develop this skill of writing complicated logic searches. One of the reasons this is difficult is that not every search engine is the same. Google is the most common search engine for X-ray search but it is also limited to which recruiters need to expand their X-Ray search to other search engines. 

  1. Webbtree Talent Source

Webbtree Talent Source is a candidate sourcing tool that can find you candidates in just a few clicks. You can source candidates with Talent Sources’s intuitive  Boolean search-powered dashboard that generates and runs queries based on custom search parameters such as skills, job titles, qualifications, locations, companies and more. It takes as little as 15 seconds to source candidates from various platforms such as GitHub, Stack Overflow, LinkedIn and more. Now that you have found the candidates, how do you reach out to them? Webbtree’s chrome extension is the answer as it enables you to extract the candidates’ contact details with a single click.

With Talent Source, recruiters can create a talent pool,  perform CRM and track candidates on a single cloud-based platform. The talent pool can also be grouped into separate talent pipelines for future reference. You can also conduct a boolean search without having to write any complex queries. You do not need to worry about which boolean operator would fit to get the best results. The tool itself generates keyword suggestions and adds them to the search bar. Yes, it is that simple!

If you are looking to enhance your sourcing strategy, you can sign up for a free Talent Source Trial here.

Conclusion

Introducing innovative avenues of tech talent sourcing is one way of exploring candidates in this competitive job market. Talent sourcing does not take place in a vacuum which is why recruiters need to take the hiring budget and the availability of time into consideration for each recruitment campaign. 

Being a tech recruiter, you have to undertake many responsibilities right from sourcing to making crucial hiring decisions. In today’s competitive environment of tech recruitment, you need to build your go-to resources and be at the top of your game to convert potential candidates into successful hires. Here’s a guide on IT recruitment terminologies for you to gain a holistic understanding of technical recruitment.

Are you looking for assistance with your technical recruitment process to sort, filter, and vet the best candidates for your job openings?

Sign up to Webbtree Recroot for free and unfold an end-to-end solution for your recruitment needs.

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