One of the most common ways of hiring new talent is through a recruitment agency. But is that the most effective way? Not necessarily…
The process of recruitment consists of 3+1 steps:
- 1. Defining the team
- 2. Sourcing talents
- 3. The selection process
- And the +1 is… Taking care of the new hire (HR)
Recruitment agencies conduct the whole hiring process, from team definition to hiring itself. They act as a middle man and take a fee in the process. Sounds familiar, right?
In theory, there’s nothing wrong with relying on a 3rd party. In many industries, hiring through a recruitment agency works well for both the job seekers’ and employers’ point of view.
However, when it comes to tech, the balance between supply and demand got overturned, and the type of roles are so diverse, that this traditional method no longer seems to be effective.
Now let’s go through the reasons why traditional recruitment is unsustainable in the field of tech, and we’ll explore a modern recruitment method that will help you cut corners to find new hires (or get hired).
So what’s the problem?
Companies fight an uphill battle to fill the demand for developers in tech. Tech companies and startups often struggle to find new, skilled talent for their open positions. The complexity of these positions makes the hiring process much harder and requires a lot of flexibility from both parties. (Just take a look at the complexity of positions at Netflix)
Not to mention the competition. Top-notch developers are often ‘harvested’ by large companies, who have their own in-house recruitment department, also offer perks and benefits hard to compete with for a small firm (though interesting projects are slowly getting more appealing for developers).
Smaller companies and startups who rely solely on traditional hiring methods are left without “ammunition” to battle these highly resourceful giants. Wondering why? Let’s go through the disadvantages of traditional hiring methods one-by-one.
1. Lack of suitable candidates
The field of tech is more diverse than ever. When hiring for an open position, companies are often looking for talent with a specific combination of skills from multiple areas. The more specific the experience companies are looking for, the harder it is to find suitable talent to match the position.
According to Robert Walter’s study in 2017, 74% of hiring managers said that a lack of suitable candidates was a barrier to recruitment in 2016. And that was 3 years ago! Tech is on a constant, exponential rise with an ever-increasing need for skilled developers.
Since top-notch developers are highly sought after, the race to acquire the best talent is taken to the extreme. Competitive salaries have become the standard, with benefits and perks as obvious expectations, while hiring processes are expected to be quick and efficient. Slow decision making, especially when hiring contractors, will likely result in losing top talent to organizations who can send out offers faster.
2. Time restraints
In traditional hiring, recruiters are responsible for the process as a whole. Depending on the number of applicants and the complexity of the role, this method can be extremely time-consuming and nerve-wracking, especially for smaller companies with limited resources.
Recruiters need to perform sourcing, communications, and interviews ‘manually’, so each of these steps takes a lot of time. At the same time, this means that a recruiter has limited capacity to assess each applicant thoroughly, which may lead to faulty evaluation. Clearly, this lengthy process cannot fit into the hiring needs of rapidly growing tech companies and startups.
3. Biased decision-making
Traditional recruitment methods rely heavily on human opinion. Human decision-making is affected by subjective factors that might not even be relevant to the role. Therefore, there is a high risk of making unconscious and biased hiring decisions.
These biased hiring decisions appear in many forms, and can lead to a number of mistakes, such as dismissing the right candidate due to faulty communication. It may even promote a lack of diversity, as alternative work styles, thoughts and perspectives might be perceived as a disadvantage by the recruiter.
In the long run, this affects a company’s progression and productivity negatively, especially for tech start-ups who thrive on diverse talent.
4. The Rise of the Internet
The rise of social channels brings new opportunities for recruitment. Recruiters are turning to LinkedIn to expand their talent pool, and to pre-screen candidates. Social media enables recruiters to learn about candidate personalities and likelihood of fit within the new role prior to reaching out to them.
According to Glassdoor, 79% of job seekers choose to use social media within their job search. So, we are tempted to consider social media as a decent additional recruiting platform.
However, LinkedIn is already a crowded platform. Like most social media channels, the noise “deafens” the relevant audience, making it nearly impossible to reach the desired target group. At the same time, the competition on these mediums is extremely high and often blessed with generous media budgets. Mammoth firms with in-house hiring departments are flooding the best candidates with numerous messages on a daily basis. Such messages are often unwanted, and talents perceive these channels as rather ‘spammy’.
Furthermore, even though someone’s profile is appealing to you, it’s difficult to know if they are looking for a job at this time. Due to these factors, the well-known metaphor of the needle and the haystack applies perfectly to the success rate of finding suitable talents on social media.
What is the solution, then?
What is a sustainable way of recruiting in tech, then? How can we satisfy both parties; the companies and the candidates?
Our answer is: by flipping the funnel and using a platform where companies and developers can both be present and connect in a more natural way. A platform, where developers are active job-seekers and get notified on relevant job opportunities, then they can express their interest and decide on who to get the conversation going with. A platform, where companies get informed every time a new potential hire is looking for a job based on relevancy and urgency.
That’s exactly what you get with Techloop.
1. The cream of the crop in one place
Techloop has a talent pool of over 15,000 skillful developers and IT experts companies can reach out to. Companies can easily log into the platform to perform a search in details and check the skillset of the potential candidates immediately. Sourcing made easy – there’s no need for lengthy questionnaires and pre-screening when using Techloop.
2. Rapid recruitment
Techloop’s talent pool is ready to dive into immediately. Save time by skipping to get in details with all the CVs of candidates that applied to a role and perform the lengthy first steps of a traditional hiring process.
After conducting a search for the next potential hire, it’s possible to save these search criteria as open positions, visible to candidates on Techloop. On top of reaching out proactively to suitable candidates, the candidates can also express their interest in interesting roles. This doubles the chance to find your next hire.
Moreover, companies get notified whenever a new candidate joins Techloop, who meets the requirements of their open positions. This way, companies won’t miss out on a single potential hire again.
3. Objective decision making
The candidate profiles remain anonymous until the point when they decide to accept a company’s inquiry. This means companies start discussions based on skills and expertise, not on bias and fragmented information. When looking for potential candidates, companies only see objective, unbiased profiles, so the true professional values can be compared.
4. Targeted Digital Access
In our modern world, job seekers mostly turn to the internet to find a job, especially when working in the field of tech. However, instead of using ‘spammy’ social media channels, candidates are looking for more professional platforms, where they can be found by employees, and where they are not bombarded with irrelevant offers.
Techloop fulfills all these criteria while providing a highly specialized platform for companies and candidates alike.
Why not give it a go?
In our previous blog post, we wrote about recently giving the Techloop platform a brand new look and feel, as well as switching to a reasonable subscription-based model, that makes it accessible for an even wider range of companies.
You can go ahead and discover tech talent for completely free, and check what the brand new Techloop Platform has to offer.
Do you have any questions? Drop a message here or reach out in chat.
The Techloop Team
