How To Optimize Your Tech Recruitment Process

What is IT Recruitment Process?

So what is IT recruitment process? It’s the process of hiring tech specialists ‒ from the moment of opening a new position to successful filling. One can divide this process into several steps: preparation, sourcing, screening, technical interview, hiring decision, and final offer.

1. Preparation. When there’s a need to extend your team with a new tech specialist, you should first get ready for the IT recruiting process. The preparation stage includes writing a clear job description, deciding on the recruitment methods to use, and creating a list of interview questions.
2. Sourcing. Once you decide all of that, you can start the sourcing process. Sourcing is an active search for candidates who meet your requirements. As a rule, recruiters look for active job seekers on online job boards and social media, then pick the ones whose skills and experience are relevant to an open job position. 
3. Screening is the process of filtering out job applicants at the very beginning by checking out their main qualifications and experience, salary expectations, and readiness for the offered working conditions. As a rule, this step of the recruiting process comes as a verbal interview with a company’s HR during which they can also check the candidate’s soft skills and cultural fit with a company.  
4. Technical interview. After successful screening interviews, recruiters invite candidates to technical interviews which are held with tech experts. These interviews aim to check hard skills and might consist of several rounds (depending on the company's inner processes). Some positions require a test task to better understand the candidate’s expertise, which is also a part of the tech interview. 
5. Hiring decision. After interviewing all relevant candidates, recruiters talk to hiring managers and other decision makers to see if they are ready to offer a job to any of the candidates they interviewed.
6. Offer. If the team agrees on the candidate, the company sends an offer and upon successful signing, the onboarding process starts. If the hiring decision isn’t made, recruiters go back to previous steps to continue their search.

Advantages of Optimizing the Tech Recruiting Process

While the process of IT recruitment might differ from company to company, this can always be enhanced to get the most out of it. But before we dive into the ways on how to improve hiring processes, let’s see why you need these improvements.

Reduced time to fill positions

Optimization is always about time, so it’s the most obvious advantage. Having a smooth tech recruiting process, you’ll be able to cut down the hiring time dramatically. Moreover, the less time you spend hiring, the lower your hiring expenses.

Improved hiring decisions

With a structured and well-thought-out recruitment process, the chances to make informed hiring decisions increase dramatically. A well-defined recruitment process enables you to establish clear evaluation criteria, facilitating fair and unbiased candidate comparisons.

Enhanced candidate experience

The recruitment process takes up not only your time but your candidates’ as well. Thus, it’s important to take care of a candidate’s positive experience, too. 72% of job applicants say that their interview experience with a company will most likely affect their decision to accept (or not) an offer. And even if candidates don’t get an offer, they should have a good impression of your company to consider other positions in the future.

Elevated employer brand

This point results from the previous one. If candidates have a good experience when applying for the job, by undergoing interviews, getting timely and reasonable feedback, they can share this experience with coworkers or friends. They can even promote your brand by leaving positive comments on job boards or social media. A positive employer brand is highly important for hiring companies since almost 70% of tech job seekers read reviews about companies during a job hunt.

Now that you know “why” you should optimize your recruitment process, let’s move on to recruiting tips and tricks to help you do this. 

How to Improve IT Recruitment Process?

Before you start taking steps to optimize hire processes in your company, analyze their current state. Talk to your recruitment team and identify the bottlenecks that prevent you from effective hiring. Below are some effective ways to improve recruiting processes.

Write clear job descriptions

A job description is your first touchpoint with a candidate, so it should include all the necessary information about a job position such as skills, experience, duties, benefits, salary rates, etc. Clear job descriptions will more likely allow you to attract relevant candidates at the initial recruitment stages and form a more quality pipeline. 

If writing job descriptions takes you a lot of time, you can try using AI in recruitment for process improvement. Generative AI tools can give you ideas for creative and comprehensive job descriptions.

Focus on tech when advertising

51.3% of software developers consider the technologies they will be working with as the most important factor when looking for a job. So if you want to increase your chances of attracting relevant tech specialists, make sure you emphasize the tech stack in your ads on Google, social media, and other resources. 

Look for talents globally

Since Covid times, remote work has become the new normal, and many businesses broadened their recruitment efforts from the local to a global scale. If you haven’t done this yet, it can become a good opportunity to make your team diverse, hunt top talents, and even cut down the salary budget (if you hire employers from regions with lower salary rates).

Nowadays, the number of platforms that help you hire globally is rising. Huntly is one of the most innovative ones. It’s a community-based recruitment platform that will help you hire the best IT specialists anywhere in the world using personal referrals on a scale! With our innovative approach to tech hiring, you can save the hiring costs thanks to two factors. First, we can look for candidates in countries with cheaper economies. Secondly, our referral bonus model allows you to decide how much you will pay for a successful hire. Moreover, it’s risk-free to get started since the vacancy posting is completely free of charge.

Make skill assessment concise

It’s important to check candidates’ skills before making a hiring decision, but skill assessment should be short and relevant. Prepare a list of necessary skills for an open tech position along with questions and tasks that will help you evaluate those exact skills. Remember to include tasks that will reflect the job seeker’s future responsibilities and daily duties ‒ this will help you to quickly identify the best candidates for the position.

Enhance the tech interview process

The tech interview is one step that tells you the most about a candidate. So, it’s crucial to make interviews a smooth and effective experience for both you and job seekers. Here are some tips you could use:

• Get ready for a tech interview. As an employer, you should know exactly what you’re going to ask your candidates. Depending on the tech position you’re trying to fill, you should prepare a corresponding list of questions. For example, if you’re looking for a React developer, you need to have a list of React interview questions at hand.
• Communicate interview agenda. To make the interview process clear and structured, you should share the agenda with a candidate at the beginning of an interview. This way, every participant will know what to expect.
• Ask relevant questions only. Tech interviews aim to help you make the right hiring decision, so small talk is redundant at this stage. Stick to your plan and try to get valuable information about the candidate's hard skills.
• Leverage live coding sessions or whiteboard tasks during tech interviews. By practicing this approach, you’ll be able to understand a candidate’s way of thinking, their problem-solving skills, plus their ability to manage stress.
• Let candidates ask their questions to learn more about their values and provide them with a clear understanding of the position. 

Increase diversity and inclusion

Fostering diversity and inclusion inside an organization is good for your brand’s reputation. With 76% of job seekers prioritizing diversity as an important factor when choosing a company, you should make sure that your business supports and implements the idea of DEI (diversity, equity, & inclusion). Moreover, diversity is often associated with innovation, fresh ideas, and new perspectives that make your business grow faster.

Stay updated on tech recruitment trends

The recruitment environment changes rapidly, so you should keep up with the latest trends to take your recruitment results to a higher level. One of the latest trends is the emergence of IT recruiter network platforms for hiring. Huntly belongs to such platforms and connects employers with recruiters all over the world. We aim to revolutionize tech hiring and improve the recruitment experience for all parties involved: employers, recruiters, and candidates. 

With these ways on how to improve recruitment processes, you can reconsider your current approaches and optimize the parts that prevent you from quality hiring. And if you have difficulties with hiring those needed tech specialists, just give Huntly a go ‒ we’ll gladly assist you!