Planning your tech recruitment strategy

Today’s recruitment market is extremely fierce, especially for qualified individuals. With that, it comes as no surprise that tech is among the most challenging fields to recruit in, and with more businesses relying on technology in their day-to-day operations, those difficulties can now be felt by all organizations, including those whose core area of business isn’t even IT.

{{cta}}

To recruit top tech talent, employers can no longer sit back and wait for applications to start flowing in. Instead, they have to take a more proactive approach and show that their organization has what applicants are looking for, and for that, they need a strategy.

In this article, you’ll learn about planning your tech recruitment strategy to attract top talents in the field.

What’s a recruitment strategy

Hiring is an important process in every organization. Whether it’s a small- or medium-sized business or a Fortune 500 company, recruiting can and will get difficult, especially in more competitive fields, such as tech. To make this process easier and maximize the use you’ll get out of your resources, you need a strategy that will make your company stand out from the crowd and provide an outstanding experience to not only those candidates who apply to your job but also those who merely consider it to increase the likelihood of them moving to the next step.

A recruitment strategy is a plan that outlines how to successfully find, recruit, and hire qualified candidates. It can either be used by in-house recruiters or forwarded to recruitment agencies your company works with to ensure consistency in the candidate experience, allowing you to outperform your competition every single time and keep hiring some of the best talents on the market.

It can include measures such as how you post job openings, how interviews are conducted, and what systems you’ll have to improve your hiring efforts, such as an employee referral program. And while the contents will differ between organizations, the goal is always the same: to excel in the field of technology recruitment.

Why you need a plan

Every business wants to have the best employees, but they’re not always willing to take the time to create a unique position for themselves in the job market. To develop a transparent hiring process that allows your recruiters to pick the best candidates, you need a plan oriented toward the long-term success of your organization and every person building it. Here are some of the benefits a recruitment strategy will bring you.

1. Transparency

With a recruitment strategy in place, you can ensure that all hiring done by your company is transparent and that everybody involved in the process follows it with one goal in mind. It also helps provide your candidates with a better experience by keeping them updated at every stage of the recruitment with clear feedback and information on what they can expect next.

2. Consistency

Consistent actions produce consistent results, and it’s another reason why you should consider implementing a hiring strategy at your company. By applying predetermined criteria to all candidates, you’ll decrease the likelihood of making a biased decision, which might deprive you of top talents. In addition, you’ll ensure that processes such as pre-screening, interview scheduling, candidate assessments and other interactions with candidates are the same, making decision-making even more objective and unbiased.

3. Quality

Writing job descriptions is among the most important steps a recruiter will take to hire top tech talents. With a hiring strategy and by consistently keeping in touch with tech trends and skills demands, you’ll have a clear framework of what the description should include and how to write it to attract the right candidates based on different criteria, which will allow you to speed up this process and ensure success every single time.

4. Credibility

Another reason to have a clear recruitment strategy is a byproduct of the benefits we mentioned before. Once candidates discover how structured your hiring processes are, they’ll share this information with their peers, helping you build trust in the industry and position yourself as a company that values its candidates, whether they become employees or not.

4 key differences between tech and non-tech hiring

Before you start developing your technology recruitment strategy, you need to know about the key differences between tech and non-tech hiring to better tailor the plan to the needs of your potential candidates and the job market as a whole.

Scope of work: Most companies use the same recruiters to hire for different positions. Tech recruiters, on the other hand, are focused on specific niches and often have first-hand experience working in the jobs they’re now recruiting for.

Interview: Tech interviews tend to be more hands-on, with candidates having to solve specific problems they might encounter in their job to prove to recruiters that they have the skills to proactively address those challenges.

Cost: Because tech hiring requires specific knowledge, the costs associated with recruitment tend to be higher than for non-technical fields. To recruit the best talents without spending too much money, many companies, especially small- and medium-sized ones, outsource technology recruitment to third-party agencies rather than hire an in-house tech recruiter.

Candidate experience: When candidates see the recruiter is knowledgeable on tech, they’re much more likely to build a bond and have a more stress-free conversation, which allows them to better showcase their skill set and prove that they have what you’re looking for.

How to plan your recruitment in 6 easy steps

Now that you know how a recruitment strategy can benefit your company, it’s time to answer the most important question of this article: how do you actually build one? Here are 6 steps you can follow to plan your recruitment today.

1. Define your goals

Every successful strategy starts with research, and the same goes for your recruitment plan. Before you begin developing the strategy, determine your objectives (such as increasing the number of employees, diversity, etc.) and the requirements you have based on them.

Once you know what you want to accomplish, create a budget for your future candidates and the recruitment process, which might come with some extra costs, such as advertising or working with tech recruitment agencies, among others.

Lastly, try to forecast your results based on your organization’s history and industry standards, which are often accessible on the internet. If the predictions differ significantly from your expectations, consider choosing more realistic goals, especially if it’s your first time implementing a recruitment strategy.

2. Review existing resources

Before establishing a recruiting strategy, see what resources are already available at your organization when it comes to hiring. This can be your previous recruitment strategy, candidate or employee feedback, etc.

These resources can give you important information about your talent’s needs and priorities to help you better align your company’s value proposition to match their requirements. It’s also a great opportunity to review past results, including a budget, to better understand what you can expect this time. In addition, don’t forget to consider your past wins and mistakes so you can be better prepared this time around.

3. Choose your technology

Determining what technology you’ll use to fulfill your recruitment strategy is paramount. Even though many tools are available on the market, most companies will find it sufficient to use a recruitment management system, such as an applicant tracking system (ATS). Most of those tools come with various features that minimize time spent on manual tasks, which frees you to fulfill your plan across different areas.

An AI-powered ATS like Manatal allows you to post job offers on different job-seeking websites with one click of a button, pre-screen employees, and analyze your efforts with extensive reporting tools. It’s also a great way to avoid bias in recruitment, which will increase diversity in your organization and help you get one step further before the competition.

4. Create a system to assess the best candidates

It’s now time to consider how you’ll approach candidate selection. In this step, you can establish where you want to look for candidates, how many interviews each of them will go through before you decide on making them an offer, what those interviews will look like, and how you’ll determine whether a candidate did well.

You can even prepare some basic questions you’d like to ask your candidates and answers to some of the most popular questions you’ve been asked before. However, leave room for personalization because trying to come up with one-size-fits-all questions will ultimately hurt your recruitment strategy so remember to stay flexible.

Pre-screening and background checks are other important steps to consider here. There are many ways to test your potential employees, depending on the role they’re applying for. There are various types of candidate assessments to consider for highly skilled tech candidates that will help you save time and money on the candidates who applied for the job despite not meeting the criteria.

5. Making an offer

If you followed the previous steps, you’ll now have to decide to hire the best person for the job. This process should also be planned so you can replicate it in the future and provide candidates with a smooth and consistent experience that they’ll remember for a long time. To do this, define what you’ll do beforehand, such as how you’ll contact the candidate, when you’ll contact them, what you’ll say, and how you’ll negotiate if needed.

So, is it where your recruitment strategy ends? Not quite. The best recruitment strategies go beyond making an. If you want to outperform your competition in the tech space, you need to define what will happen when the offer is accepted. It includes asking yourself who will be responsible for the onboarding process, how you can help the candidate make a smooth transition from their current job, and more.

6. Keep improving

Finally, you should use new hire feedback and analytics to improve and optimize your recruitment strategy. Ask them about their experience during the interview and selection process, what they liked, what posed a challenge, and how those areas can be improved.

No matter how great your hiring strategy is today, you should never stop analyzing it and looking for ways to improve it because there’s always something that can help you take your hiring to the next level. Find it.

4 DON’Ts of planning a recruitment strategy

Recruitment has changed drastically over the years, primarily because of new technologies supporting recruiters. Here are 4 things you should NEVER do if you want to attract top tech talents to your organization.

1. DON’T make the process too complex

It will only irritate your top talent. Avoid asking the candidate to interview with several stakeholders on different days of the week or arrange extra interviews. One phone interview and one on-site or video chat interview are sufficient. Use assessments as a prerequisite before or between any on-site or video interview. 

2. DON’T keep your candidates in the dark

Communicate frequently and close the loop on applicants who don't fit the bill. Failure to do so is harmful to your employer's brand and reputation and has long-term consequences that are often difficult to reverse. After interviewing a strong prospect, express interest immediately and keep in touch until the job is filled.

3. DON’T use a one-size-fits-all approach

The majority of job descriptions differ from one role to the next. From specific tech skill sets and experience levels,to company requirements and expectations -  these evolve and sometimes change directions completely. It’s always a good idea to go through your job description and make necessary changes before posting it on social media or other sites. Pay attention to what you're looking for in your applicants and how they can grow in their positions.

4. DON’T rush the hiring process

Hiring and hurrying are not compatible. When it comes to hiring outstanding applicants, the priority should be to focus on your company's long-term goals. You should set aside enough time to establish a strategy and budget to keep your recruiting goals on track. Because even the best candidates require attention and care during the first months, the onboarding goals should be explicitly conveyed to them.

Why you should avoid recruiting without a strategy

Bad hires are inevitable, even with the best recruitment strategy in place. Still, having a plan will help you minimize those bad decisions and significantly improve your overall success rate. Here are just some dangers of recruiting without a strategy.

1. Loss of productivity

This is particularly true for tech hires - especially when the recruiter has gained little insight into the technicalities of the role that is advertised and why it is important to the organization. Using generic requirements could attract a vast pool of applicants who are not necessarily the candidate you’re looking for. 

This eats up precious minutes and days, and lengthens speed to hire. Worse, if the wrong candidate is hired in haste - it's a waste of time if you make a bad hiring decision and the employee can't do their job effectively or the person they're replacing. The organization may be investing the same amount of resources in the employee, but the output is much lower. Over time, this can significantly impact the team's results and overall performance.

2. Low morale

A poor hire with a negative attitude toward work can negatively impact employee morale. If they cannot integrate effortlessly into existing teams and get along with their coworkers, the office climate may suffer. It may impact how much workers love their work and how likely they are to stay with the company in the long run.

3. Increased costs

When you recruit the wrong person in tech, you’ll have to go back to the drawing board and find a replacement. In today’s IT recruitment this is extremely costly. It means you’ll spend twice the resources to find the right fit for the job. What’s more, even when a new employee starts working for a company, there’s the cost of onboarding to consider, as well as the reality that the new hire may not be as productive as the experienced employee they replaced, which might increase your costs even further.

Give your recruitment strategy a boost with the latest hiring technology

Manatal is an applicant tracking system (ATS) designed to help you find the best candidates, manage your talent pool, and help you save time and money on hiring. We offer many features that will help access the best tech talents, including:

Candidate sourcing: Find candidates through various platforms, including social media, job-seeking websites, your own career site, recommendations, and more.

Candidate profiles: Build comprehensive candidate profiles with data from LinkedIn, social media, and many other sources in addition to resume parsing.

Recommendations: Use the latest AI technology, search tools, filters, and candidate scoring system to browse your recruitment database and get the best recommendations.

Collaboration: Assign user roles and invite hiring managers to collaborate in real-time with our chat system and email integration to improve communication.

Manage tasks: With a calendar and reminders, you can now customize your notifications and better manage your time by prioritizing things that matter the most to you.

Analytics: Keep track of important metrics and KPIs with a custom dashboard that gives you access to comprehensive reports and analytics.

Career page: Create your own career page or connect an existing one to meet the requirements of even the most demanding candidates.

Always-on support: Our experts will assist you with data migration and any other problem you encounter any time you need via live chat or email.

Start recruiting with Manatal today

Click here to start your free 14-day trial with Manatal and take your recruitment strategy to a whole new level with the latest candidate relationship management technology. All you have to do is start an account, set it up by following our step-by-step guide, and start recruiting top tech talents in the field – and all that without spending a cent for the first 2 weeks.