Can you still hire Developers on LinkedIn?

I’m lucky enough to be part of a number of active Recruiter Communities here in the UK (DBR, Recruiting Brainfood and RecEvents to name a few - check them out if you haven’t already as there’s some phenomenal regular free content and events!)

What I’m increasingly noticing though is a lot of talk about sourcing, and very little about engagement. And that’s exactly what’s inspired this blog post.

*News Flash* - Yes you can still hire Developers on LinkedIn! And yes you can still hire Developers on job boards too!

Fun fact - in my previous job I made all of our hires directly, 60% of those came from LinkedIn Recruiter.

Sourcing

This is isn’t an anti-sourcing blog by any means, but it does surprise me when a Recruiter says to me, “LinkedIn Recruiter is expensive”, yet they’re more than happy to spend days and weeks x-ray searching different websites to find a Developer’s email address. Your time can quite quickly be more expensive than that LinkedIn Recruiter license.

Sourcing is HUGELY important in the role of any Recruiter, and it’s critical that good recruiters (especially in tech) know about new sourcing tools, and where tech talent hangs out online. What’s equally as (or more) important though is knowing how to engage that community when you find them...

What does engagement mean to me?

Focussing more time on engagement over sourcing doesn’t make you a lazy Recruiter - IMO it makes you a very smart one.

Engagement to me, in short, means

Put Some Effort In!

Don’t just copy and paste a job advert you used 2 years ago. At the very minimum you should sit down with the team to construct an interesting ad. What makes you different? What problems are you trying to solve? What’s in it for them?

Same thing goes for your messages (whether on LinkedIn, StackOverflow, Hired, whatever other new platform that comes out) - take time to personalise your message before you send it but don’t write an essay - and remember that most views are on smaller mobile screens. Give some insight into what’s required and what makes this opportunity exciting - don’t just copy and paste a bullet-pointed list of technical skills you know nothing about.

Create Some Content!

I get it, we’re all crazy busy. And this is something I constantly have to remind myself to do, but putting time aside for this is super important.

Maybe you can create a doc for candidates that clearly outlines the end-to-end candidate journey with listed expectations, rough timescales, how they’ll be measured and more? Maybe you can throw some cool pictures or video content in there too.

Maybe write a blog? Maybe host a meetup? Maybe ask the marketing team to help you create some neat stuff for social media?

From my own experience I know that I have times when I’m better at posting on social media sites than others, but I know it works because I’ve had multiple great candidates come to me directly referencing ‘x video you shared from the Christmas party’ or ‘x blog post you wrote’.

You don’t have to be perfect at it, just start. I’d recommend trying your hardest with this piece though. Or if you’re fortunate enough to have the budget, hire someone to do it!

Being Honest!

If you say you’re going to call a candidate at 1pm - call them at 1pm.

If you don’t know what version of a JS framework the team uses - don’t lie - just be honest and tell them that you’ll find out.

If you know that the Hiring Manager is away for a week and you won’t get feedback until they’re back - tell the candidate that.

Ultimately, treat candidates who’ve engaged with you already with respect and don’t fall at the last hurdle. Otherwise the candidate will be turned off your brand or take something else and you’ll be left to start the search all over again. And we all know what a rubbish feeling that is.

Thanks for reading! Follow me here or on Twitter @LauraOvoTech