5 Outbound Recruiting Strategies to Hire Software Talent

In 2020 alone, there are more than 4.4 million software professionals in the U.S. Though, many organizations are suffering from talent shortages and software development-related positions are no different; instead, it is more severe for many reasons. Organizations are struggling to find tech talent to fill their job openings, and recruiters face tremendous challenges when hiring for software roles.  Here are some of the most common recruiting pain points for software roles and outbound recruiting strategies to help attract and retain software talent.

Common pain points when recruiting software roles and strategies you can use:

Limited pool of candidates with relevant technical skills

Although times are difficult in the market today, recruiters still often come across candidates with the wrong skills. In a recent study conducted by West Monroe, they found that with 77% of senior executives in the U.S., 51% express great difficulty finding people with suitable skill sets, while 16% mention the heightened competition as the biggest challenge in acquiring new talent. With less qualified candidates applying, recruiters are now facing hardships on top of competing for talent with competitors.

Strategy 1: Source through code-hosting platforms

To stay on top of the game and acquire talent with the right skill set for your software roles, recruiters should consider sourcing through code-hosting platforms, such as GitHub, Kaggle, Overflow, etc. Recruiters may use tech-specific filters to hone into finding candidates’ coding activity, technical skills and more. 

Learn more about how to source candidates on GitHub.

Time-Consuming hires and higher recruitment costs 

Software roles are considered more complex jobs that require a longer time to hire. For example, software engineers may take up to 35 days to hire. As we all know, the longer you wait, the more money you’re spending, and the higher chance that the candidate will be off the market. The cost per hiring software talent is generally higher than in non-technical positions; it can vary from $13,000 to $41,000 for hiring one software role.

Strategy 2: Consider the market

The main strategy to address the challenge of a long-awaited time for software candidates to apply and lower recruiting costs is to consider the market and find market insights. With EZ Insights, recruiters and hiring teams can discover competitor market insights, candidate market insights, movement rate, and value, based on years of experience, locations, and more to target the right talent at the right time to hire more strategically.

Stand out from the competition

Often, recruiters lose talent to competitors due to higher salaries, employer brand, benefits, and more. Recruiting is very competitive, and top talent often receives several offers from various companies or their current company counter-offers.

Strategy 3: Hone into your company perks

To secure your next top software talent and stand out from the competition, leverage your internal employee connections by encouraging referrals with incentives. Statistics from Glassdoor show that referred candidates are more likely to accept the offer (from 2.6% to 6.6%). In addition to encouraging internal referrals, emphasize company perks such as work-from-home stipend, physical and mental health benefits, educational growth opportunities, and more. Studies have shown that 82% of American employees prefer working from home, while 67% of employers mention hiring talent in-office only has increasingly become difficult. If your company offers remote opportunities, it is always best to mention it, to begin with. Overall, It is more about messaging and when you target candidates to show what you can offer them.

Aligning with hiring managers’ requirements & needs

Recruiters often face challenges in meeting hiring managers’ requirements and expectations for job roles, especially with software roles. The lack of communication between recruiters and hiring managers may lead to poor recruitment processes, longer time-to-hire, poor candidate experience, and a bad brand reputation.

Strategy 4: Be proactive In assessing your needs

To begin any recruiting process, recruiters must work with hiring managers to assess the needs for the role and set expectations. Software roles are no different, it even takes longer to set expectations with all the required technical skills. Therefore, it is important to be crystal clear on the job requirements for a specific role to avoid miscommunication throughout the recruitment process.

Extension application & Interview processes

Some of the top tech companies require 4 to 6 rounds of interviews for software roles, including technical skills tests and panel interviews. Long interview processes lead to candidate drop-off, poor candidate experience, and tightening of the deadline for hires. Not to mention, technical skill assessments may take up to 6 hours for software talent, hence, taking more time for hiring managers to review the work.

Strategy 5: Shorten interview processes as much as possible

Top talent is out of the market within ten days and on top of the Great Resignation, the deadline is getting tighter than ever for recruiters to fill job vacancies. Shorten the interview process as much as possible by giving shorter assessment tests to test their true ability. If you’d like to learn more about the candidates’ abilities, review their portfolio or coding activity on GitHub or other code-hosting platforms. 

Recruiting software roles takes time and consistent communication with hiring managers and teams. To avoid falling behind in today’s market, utilize these outbound recruiting strategies to discover hidden tech talent to build stronger teams and generate revenue. Find out more about how to recruit software roles in this webinar. Our team is ready to talk to help you recruit candidates with data-driven insights here.