When I initially started recruiting for my first startup, Renzu (funded by Social Capital and Redpoint and eventually acquired by SurveyMonkey now known as Momentive) in 2014, I created job recs on our website, put them on LinkedIn and a few other job boards and waited for applications to come in.
And I waited. And I waited. Eventually I realized that putting up a job posting was just the first step if I wanted a stellar application pool. Do you find yourself in a similar situation? Here are some recruiting techniques to boost your pipeline:
1. Create employee referral program: You can offer incentives to employees who refer successful candidates. This could be a monetary bonus, or a reward such as a paid vacation or a gift card. Referral bonuses make it easier for companies to find qualified candidates and build relationships with existing employees.
Employee referrals also generally produce the highest caliber candidates!
- Examples: Dropbox offers a referral bonuses for software engineers.
- Pros: This technique is cost-effective, as it engages existing employees to refer qualified candidates. It also encourages a sense of loyalty among employees.
- Cons: This technique can be difficult to track and measure, and there is no guarantee that referrals will be successful.
2. Leverage Social Media: You can use social media platforms such as TikTok and Twitter to advertise job openings and reach a wider pool of potential candidates. This is a good way to market your job opportunity to a wider talent pool. People viewing the job posting can also forward to folks in their network who might be a good fit or looking for a new role.
- Examples: Twitter is used by many companies to advertise job openings such as IBM.
- Pros: Social media is a cost-effective way to reach a large audience quickly and easily. It also enables companies to get feedback from potential candidates.
- Cons: It can be difficult to track the effectiveness of social media campaigns, and it can be time-consuming to manage multiple channels.
3. Host Technical Challenges: You can organize technical challenges or hackathons to find talented software engineers using platforms like HackerRank. These are quite attractive for software engineers as many of them like to compete to show off their skills and also maintain their technical edge.
As a side benefit, you can nurture the list of participants in the technical challenge for long term recruiting. But this technique is best suited for the patient recruiters!
- Examples: Google hosts an annual coding competition and hackathons for teams of software engineers.
- Pros: Technical challenges are a great way to find qualified candidates who can demonstrate their coding skills. They also create a sense of camaraderie and competition among participants.
- Cons: Technical challenges can be expensive to organize and manage, and there is no guarantee that the best candidates will be found.
4. Create MeetUps: You can host in-person events such as meetups or conferences to engage potential candidates. The idea similar to technical challenges is to generate excitement among software engineers at an event where recruiting is not the primary purpose but a side benefit!
- Examples: Twilio hosts a series of meetups and a conference for software engineers every year.
- Pros: In-person events provide an opportunity to build relationships with potential candidates and to get feedback on job openings. They also create an enjoyable and engaging experience for participants.
- Cons: Hosting events can be expensive and time-consuming especially if you are only hiring a few folks. Best suited for large scale hiring.
5. Provide Internships: Companies can offer internships to potential software engineers to give them an opportunity to learn more about the job and the company.
- Examples: Amazon offers a robust program of internships for software engineers, product managers and a variety of other job families.
- Pros: Internships are a great way to engage potential candidates and to create a mutually beneficial arrangement. They also help companies evaluate potential employees before making a full-time commitment.
- Cons: Internships can be difficult to manage, and there is no guarantee that the best candidates will be found.
6. Sponsor Student Events: You can sponsor student events such as hackathons and coding competitions to find talented software engineers especially targeted at college students.
- Examples: Microsoft sponsors a number of coding competitions for college students every year.
- Pros: Sponsoring events is a great way to engage with potential candidates and to create positive brand awareness. It also encourages students to pursue a career in software engineering.
- Cons: Only effective if you have an internship program - as these events are a great pipeline into an internship program. Also only applicable if your team is open to hiring new grads.
6. Post on Niche Job Boards: Companies can use niche job boards such as Stack Overflow, AngelList and Hired to target specific groups of potential candidates.
- Examples: Asana uses niche job boards to find software engineers.
- Pros: Niche job boards often have specific pools of candidates that can't be easily found elsewhere. Many of them also drive better response rate e.g. a message on StackOverflow has a better response rate than large job boards like Indeed or Monster.
- Cons: Niche job boards can be difficult to navigate and expensive.
7. Offer Contract-To-Hire Opportunities: You can offer contract-to-hire opportunities to potential candidates, allowing them to test-drive the job before committing to a full-time position. This is particularly useful if the candidate has hesitations about the role or company culture. Being a contractor allows them to experience any downsides upfront without making a permanent commitment.
- Examples: Walmart offers contract-to-hire opportunities for software engineers.
- Pros: Contract-to-hire opportunities are a great way to engage potential candidates and to create a mutually beneficial arrangement. They also help companies evaluate potential employees before making a full-time commitment.
- Cons: Contract-to-hire opportunities are complex from an administrative and legal perspective and have different talent pools. Not everybody is interested or even open to contracting opportunities.
8. Utilize Recruiting Agencies: You can use recruiting agencies to find qualified candidates quickly and easily.
- Examples: Companies like Randstad or Robert Half are recruiting agencies for software engineers. Of course, Rocket is also a fantastic option for companies interested in top tier tech talent.
- Pros: Recruiting agencies make it easy to find qualified candidates and to track the success of recruiting efforts. They also reduce the time to hire.
- Cons: Recruiting agencies can be expensive.
9. Attend Job Fairs: You can attend job fairs to meet potential candidates and to promote job openings. Many job fairs are held regularly in major metro areas.
- Examples: Coupa attends job fairs to find software engineers.
- Pros: Job fairs are a great way to engage active candidates and build relationships with them.
- Cons: Job fairs can be time consuming and generally target very active candidates who may not be the best candidates available.
10. Implement Recruiting Software: Companies can use recruiting software to automate the recruiting process and to find qualified candidates quickly and easily.
- Examples: Hireflow, Gem, and Fetcher are good examples of recruiting automation software used by hundreds of companies like ZeroCater, Notion and more.
- Pros: Recruiting software makes it easy to find qualified candidates, message them, and to track the success of recruiting efforts.
- Cons: Takes time to build candidate pipelines from outbound recruiting.
Good luck recruiting technical talent! Let us know if you have tried any of these techniques and if you have suggestions on other successful techniques to add.
About Rocket
Rocket pairs talented recruiters with advanced AI to help companies hit their hiring goals and knows technology recruiting inside out. Rocket is headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley but has recruiters all over the US & Canada serving the needs of our growing client base across engineering, product management, data science and more.
