Hiring developers can be challenging if you don’t have any technical background. You can have general guidelines and a technical recruiting cheat sheet, but it is still difficult to identify which candidates are worth it or have more experience. And browsing for general tech recruitment tips doesn’t really help.
The main issue is that there are a lot of subtle – and not so subtle – differences between developers that a non-techie is likely to miss. For example, Java and Javascript might seem like the same thing. Their name is basically the same, right? Try asking developers, and you’ll see how they will make you feel dumb in a matter of minutes.
Skilled developers are hard to find, especially for recruiters without any tech experience. But it’s not impossible. We’re sharing our 10 tech recruitment tips that have helped us find and hire the best global technical talent.
10 Technical Recruitment Tips for Non-Techies
1. Understand Tech Recruiting
Recruiting tech talent is all about understanding the business and the markets. You need to be aware that hiring developers, analysts, and other IT staff varies.
The Technology
IT roles require a specific skill set. For example, you’re looking for a database developer. In this case, you can’t approach any database dev you find on LinkedIn and expect them to be able to slot into your company.
Roles vary tremendously between companies. IT staff from smaller companies usually have an overview of the whole system from end to end. In contrast, devs from a bigger company might work on a specific design or implementation stage.
To simply put it, if you’re not technical yourself, you need support to isolate the right skills and experience in your candidates. For example, you look for a UX developer when you want to improve your user experience. Someone who can implement your interface design to make your users stay longer on your page.
If you need a better system to store payment data for your e-commerce, you look for a back-end developer with experience in cloud-based solutions like SaaS CMS. For a non-techie manager, setting specific goals is the first step to isolating the type of skills you need for your project. Ask your dev existing team (if you have one), or set up a list of goals for your new hire with your manager.
➡️ For more tips and tricks on finding tech talent, check out our blog post: How to hire remote developers!
The Market
Carefully isolating the skill set you need leads us to the second step to consider. Developers not only build websites but also help you stay competitive in the market. Before the first COVID outbreak, new software and tools, like AI or augmented reality, changed business performances and customer services.
Talented developers don’t just keep your website running. They also make sure you access the most innovative software to boost your company’s performance and stand out from competitors. In the next future, research expects a shortage of 1.4 million software developers – with over 920,000 unfilled positions for software engineers in the U.S., there are only 165,000 potential applicants. So, make sure to hire the right candidate and keep your developers with you!
2. Know What to Offer
Traditionally, recruiters, regardless of the industry, thought that the most effective way to attract employees was in terms of money. More money meant more chances of hiring.
While money continues to be an important factor for candidates, it’s certainly not the only one. Furthermore, after the pandemic, candidates want more than a generous paycheck. They want flexibility and to the ability to work anywhere.
According to a Stack Overflow survey, these are the five most popular factors developers consider when evaluating job proposals:
- Languages, frameworks, and technologies they will be working with.
- Office environment & company culture
- Flexible schedule
- Professional development opportunities
- Remote work options
3. Get Rid of Geographic Barriers
If you want to increase your chances of not only getting candidates who charge low salaries but also of getting highly experienced and certified developers, then you need to look beyond borders.
Nowadays, remote work is the key to accessing talent. Companies are no longer staying in their local areas, but they are looking for remote talent. While hiring remote implies to still taking factors such as language and time zones into consideration, it still gives you far more and better options than staying in a single area.
Regions such as Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe are great sources of highly talented remote developers.
4. Think Outside the Box
Tech talent recruitment is all about transforming traditional recruitment strategies. While writing an effective job ad helps, you need to go beyond that. Most of the time, developers aren’t actively looking for a job, so it’s even more changing to find candidates with the experience and skills you need.
So, how to solve this? By changing your approach.
In your technical recruitment process, you could include challenges. It’s an interactive and creative way to engage with developers. One example of this is ‘Code on the road’, an in-app development by Uber that gives users 3 coding challenges with time limits for each. If they pass, Uber asks if they can send them recruitment information. It’s a creative and effective way to identify skilled developers.
5. Identify Your Tech Business Goals
Another technical recruiting tip is to identify your tech goals. As we mentioned earlier, you don’t want to hire a Java developer if you need a Javascript expert.
Have a meeting with your team and list what you need and expect from the role. Once you have your list clear, you can research the technical skills you need without underestimating soft skills.
For example, you need a part-time position to support your database system. In this case, your candidate needs interpersonal skills to collaborate with the team and be fluent in English to write reports and internal documentation.
The same thing happens with other types of developers. Depending on their role, you will need specific skills. For example, in the case of Ruby on Rail developers, you want someone with great communication and interpersonal skills to talk to clients, manage the team, and report to you. In addition, you need someone with a complete overview of the project, able to manage other devs, and integrate back-end elements in the interface design. In short, you want someone who can be a great team player, not only a good developer.
6. Identify What Skills You Need to Test
We all know by now that not everything that shines is gold. A developer might tell you they have all the experience you need and skills, but is this true? You’ll never know unless you test them.
Knowing how popular and necessary certain tech skills are will allow you to decide where you want to focus your efforts or be more flexible with some of your candidates regarding the benefits they are asking.
To identify such skills, you need to evaluate your hiring goals and review that skills are generally tested more frequently than others. This is a guideline to learn the demand for them and gives you an insight into the level of competition on the market.
7. Prepare for the Interview
If you know the type of developer you want for your team, you can focus on the tech aspects. Before the interview, you can prepare specific interview questions, focussing on the skills you need. Don’t be afraid of asking tech questions or using specific vocabulary.
The point isn’t to become an expert but to be aware of the quality of the answers. Of course, to test their coding, you need someone able to help you define the quality of the outcome. But on more general questions related to how they will use their skills to improve your project, you can see whether a candidate is passionate or not about your project and company.
For a non-techie, testing practical skills can turn into a nightmare. This is why you need to arrange at least two interview trance sessions. During the first one, you test coding/development skills with the support of tech recruiters and your existing dev team.
After that, you can arrange the second round focussing the questions on your project and how they would use their skills to improve your team workflow. Finally, you can arrange the last round of interviews with the last selected candidates and focus on personality. Here, you don’t need tech support, but you must be aware of the type of solution that works for your team.
Group interviews are also a great strategy to see how a candidate interacts with potential team members. If you already have an established IT team, you can conduct technical hiring interviews, where they get to ask or solve tests with the candidate to show they perform in group sessions. This can also give you valuable insights.
8. Define: Freelance vs. Full-time Developers
Another key aspect in terms of hiring developers is to know what type of developer you want. Do you want someone that works for you temporarily? Or do you want someone fully committed to your company working full-time?
Defining these two aspects will help have a better idea of what type of candidate to target and where to look for them.
Generally, hiring freelancers seems like the safer bet. They are easy to hire through freelancing platforms like Arc, Upwork, or PeoplePerHour. And if you only need specific skills for a single project, it makes sense to go for a freelancer.
But, if you need a developer who understands your vision and who has the skills and experience you need for an extended period of time, then hiring a full-time developer makes more sense.
9. Look for Candidates in the Right Platforms
Not any job board or social media channel is worth the effort. Usually, freelance platforms and social media platforms are full of people looking for any job, especially if the job ad highlights the word “remote job.”
If you need a developer with specific knowledge of a certain framework or language, you can follow more effective recruitment methods.
There are tons of online communities, recruitment platforms and even meetups where developers normally share pieces of coding and advice. You can post your offer directly in the community. Additionally, you can also seek references for a candidate in a community or even ask them for advice on the type of questions you should focus on interviewing candidates.
10. Seek Professional Help
If these tech recruitment tips are a bit overwhelming, and you still feel hiring talent is challenging, go for the experts.
At DistantJob, as a leading remote recruitment agency, we’ve helped all types of businesses to hire remote developers for over 10 years. What makes us different from other agencies is that we exclusively focus on remote candidates and that we prioritize areas such as English proficiency, time zones, soft skills, and culture fit.
Want to know more? Contact us, and with our wide database, experience, and resources, we can help you hire a remote developer in less than two weeks.
Tech Remote Recruitment – FAQ
Technical recruiting refers to the process of sourcing, attracting, and hiring tech talent.
The best way to improve your recruitment strategy is to understand the industry. Learn where your competitors seek candidates and what developers are prioritizing in jobs, whether this is flexible arrangements, high salaries, or other types of benefits.
Technical recruiting is generally more challenging than non-technical recruiting. Recruiters are required to have a general knowledge of the technical skills they are evaluating, and often, these are more complex than non-technical recruiting.
Hire Technical Talent with DistantJob
If you want to save time, resources, and energy while hiring top global talent, contact us. At DistantJob, we can help you find the perfect techie who will smoothly adapt to your company goals and values. We make sure we match technical ability, culture, English skills, time zones, and additional requirements you might have.
