Today, as tech talent continues to get increasingly harder to hire, it forces recruiters to adopt a different game plan — especially when trying to diversify to include more people from underrepresented communities. When unemployment is low, this can feel like an impossible task, but we have solutions for you.
Author: Lia James
Tech Recruiting: Improve your outreach ROI
At humanpredictions, we detect signals that tech people leave on public websites indicating they are open to making a move. We use those signals to form our proprietary “hp Priority” score. When recruiters focus their time and energy on high hp Priority scored candidates, they increase their rate of placement and have a higher return on investment with outreach efforts.
Let’s talk about diversity
For the past several months, we’ve been working on a project our team cares a lot about — we recently launched a diversity initiative and we want your feedback. We created an open source project to catalog the growing list of groups, organizations, and resources for diverse talent in the tech community (e.g. Black Girls Who Code, Lesbians Who Tech, and PyLadies). The point of creating an open source project is to allow anyone interested in this information to have access to it, track the evolution and growth of the list, as well as have the opportunity and ability to contribute to the list and/or the overall project and mission. In this open source project you’ll find the free Boolean search strings we’ve made for any recruiter or hiring manager working in tech to help source a more diverse pool of candidates.
Round-Up Recruiter Emails: Let’s-Be-Real-People | May Edition
Our team gets a lot of requests for help with writing effective emails for sourcing and recruitment.
So, we thought: why not share real emails that actually worked?!
Our customers have shared great examples of emails that have sparked interesting dialogue and yielded great results. So we’ll be sharing these personality-filled emails with you for inspiration on a monthly basis going forward.
The Challenge for Veterans in Tech
It’s Armed Forces Day this weekend, and we think it’s important to give a big shout out to veterans, and to those that support veterans, as they exit the military and enter into new careers.
It’s not an easy task to start a new career after serving in the military.
Badass Women: The Real Leaders in Tech
What makes a leader inspirational?
When we evaluate what it takes to be a leader, we look at their contributions. But to be inspirational, we look at the depth of experience they bring to the table and how those experiences influence their decisions.
Inspirational leaders have been shaped by learnings throughout their career with influences from various jobs, mentors, and personal lessons that can sometimes go undisclosed. We hear grand stories of rising from failure, seeking the guidance of mentors, and the general motivations behind a leader’s ambition and drive.
Your Developers Are Leaving You & It’s Not About the Money
If your developers are leaving you, then it’s time to reflect on your Money Mindset. Do these statements ring true for you?
- “They’re just going to leave in a year or two anyway, what’s the point in investing in them now? I can’t afford to just throw money away like that.”
- “We all know developers make 20% increases with every move they make. What company can afford to retain their teams with numbers like that?”
Sound familiar? This mindset would both keep quality people from joining your team, and drive current people away. Furthermore, these statements reflect a huge error in thinking about money and retention. In this blog entry, we will debunk some of the myths…
Define Your Brand Already, Recruiter
As recruiters, we spend a lot of time looking at profiles of potential candidates on several different social media channels. These profiles inform thoughts and assumptions about potential candidates including: skills, interests, experience level, and even their personality. Think about the assumptions made after looking at someone’s Twitter bio, tweets they’ve shared in the last 24 hours, or even their summary (or lack thereof) on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn
Headline – this small piece of real estate has a lasting impression. Does it represent what you do in the right light? Keep in mind that this headline is something people remember when they see your face or hear your name, use it strategically.
Photo – they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Don’t get too hung up on the photo, but do think about what yours says about you. For starters, do you have a photo? And if so, is it recent? We all know those people that still have a headshot up from ten years ago because it’s still their favorite, but let’s be real, using an old photo doesn’t go unnoticed.
The summary – LinkedIn isn’t always the easiest place to reach developers or other technical folks. But if you’re using it to do outreach, think about what you’re saying here and who you’re trying to reach. Are you using a bunch of recruiter jargon or are you personalizing it to tell a more whole story? Think about your audience, always and meet them where they are. This is about you, but it’s for them.
Well, assumptions go both ways…
With all of this information you collected from the words they shared online, have you taken time to think about the assumptions other people may be making about you from the words you’re sharing? Have you thought about the impact these words also may have on someone’s interest level in responding to you or even working with you and your company?
Let’s do a quick assessment of your social media, no not the company’s social media, but your =&0=& social media:
Stop Playing the Hiring Blame Game
“Everyone emphasizes humility in interviews, and though people can talk about it, it’s not always the case in execution.” This observation by Ryan Verner, 8th Light’s Director of Education and Software Developer has been playing over and over in my mind like the Netflix previews that loop and repeat. It led to a much deeper conversation with Verner about the gap that exists between people on either side of the hiring process.
The conversation about this gap seems like a hamster wheel of blame with too many fingers pointing at who’s at fault. The blame typically falls on the recruiter or the job seeker. But there is so much misinformation, miscommunication, and a misalignment of expectations that it doesn’t come down to just one group of people that need to change or fix their mindset.
In actuality, there are a lot of factors that impact and perpetuate the problem.
=&0=&The recruiting industry has made a hard shift in recruitment practices. It’s gone from a people-first craft to gaming the system and streamlining the process with computers and AI. We =&1=&be using the latest technology to help us do our jobs better and make more informed decisions, but technology should never replace the human component.
Sites like CareerBuilder, Indeed, and LinkedIn are designed to close the gaps between hiring teams and job seekers, but they are actually also a big part of the problem. Sites like these give both sides a free pass for practicing lazy habits.
For example, instead of using LinkedIn as a platform to share valuable information and to personally connect with the right people, features like “apply with a click”, encourage a mindless and dehumanizing application process. That means people don’t invest the time to craft an application, cover letter, or resume that is specific to that job or company. And while the time invested is less intensive, it gives job seekers the misconception that they invested an appropriate amount of time applying to jobs.
I hear this all the time: job seekers expressing frustration in applying to 100+ jobs and getting nowhere. Well, sorry, but no surprise there. There’s no real investment. It’s clicking buttons and feeling like there’s a sufficient output to get desirable outcomes — but it’s not.
It’s all so generic. No one wants generic, but applicants are doing generic things.
What about the hiring side? These technologies also encourage teams and managers to exhibit lazy habits, which creates a cyclical process that widens the hiring gap even more. Companies post generic wish lists in the form of a job posting that attract groups of people that sound the same with few to no differentiators. Sometimes candidates aren’t even qualified.
Cue all the recruiter headaches.
Complaints about these types of resumes fill our LinkedIn feeds. But if you’re not clear on what you need for the role or how you want information in the application process, this is what you’ll get. You get a gap. And, when you took out the human element, you should have seen it coming. No room for complaining from where I see it.
The bottom line here is that sites like these tend to remove the human connection out of a process that so desperately needs it.
=&2=&Be realistic. If you look for unicorns, there’s gonna be a gap. (
psst… fantasy
The Payoff of Hard Work and Apprenticeships
Sure, putting an apprenticeship program together requires a lot of work, but have I mentioned there are some incredible outcomes and a great return on that investment that goes beyond financial gains? If you haven’t read the first two articles of this three-part series on apprenticeships, you may want to read about the building blocks and challenges first! I started by digging into what it takes to build a plan for a program and then explored the challenges companies should plan for early.