The secret sauce of hiring a technical recruiter
I was recently talking to our CEO at Devskiller, Jakub. Now, this is a guy who has run development teams for a number of major companies. Not only is he exceptional at the technical side of things, he has built entire teams which include marketing, sales, success and recruitment.
So what do you think you can learn from a technical guy who has also hired technical recruiters? An understanding of what success means from both sides of the equation. He knows exactly what he needs out of a technical recruiter and exactly who he needs for his team. That’s why I asked him, what is the secret to hiring a technical recruiter?
Being a recruiter is more important than being technical
This was probably the biggest surprise for me. After all, it seems that the biggest complaint about tech recruiters is that they don’t have the technical foundation to talk to developers.
Well, in his experience, the technical side of things can be learned. Generally, you are going to want a technical recruiter who’s eager to learn and has shown an interest in developing their technical knowledge. A great indication of this attitude is a badge signaling the successful completion of Devskiller’s Tech Recruitment Certification Course. But no, there’s something else that Jakub looks for.
You want a recruiter who can judge fit well
Like a Savile Row tailor, the best tech recruiters are insanely good at determining fit. After all, the tech side of the hiring process is taken care of elsewhere. There are automatic skill screens like Devskiller and technical coding interviews run by technical interviewers. The best recruiters aren’t there to judge technical ability. Instead, they are are able to judge whether a candidate fits in a position. What do I mean by fit?
Fit is a combination of different things
- Appropriate skills
- Desire to learn
- Ability to work with the team
- Success in the way your business is structured
- Alignment of their goals for the company’s goals
- Diversity of viewpoints
- Energy
- Ethics
So how do you go about seeing if your candidate can assess this admittedly subjective set of criteria in a potential hire? Most recruiters will figure out fit in the cultural interview section of the hiring process. So how do you find out if somebody is great at doing cultural interviews? Well, you just have them do cultural interviews.
Of course, you don’t want to have them interview actual candidates in your pipeline. Tech candidates, in particular, are incredibly valuable and can represent a huge investment in sourcing. You don’t want to send someone in who could potentially either lose a good candidate or actually hurt your employer reputation. Instead, it’s down to you, the hiring manager, to make this happen all with the help of the skills you picked up back in your high school play(more on that soon).
Step 1: Come up with a job
Choose a technical position that would be the kind of position your candidate will recruit. In fact, it could be the last tech role your company did hire. So take a look at it and see if you’ve made a very clear job description. We’ve spoken elsewhere about what goes into a really great job description and how it can help candidate experience. Just make sure yours is up to snuff and then pass it on to your tech recruiter candidate. It’ll be up to them to prepare interviews for candidates to fill this position.
Step 2: Prepare three different profiles
This is where your amateur dramatics training really comes into play. Prepare three different developer candidates who could fill this position. Try to make them distinct with unique characteristics. For instance, you could have one who may have less experience but has the technical skills and a lot of enthusiasm. Another could be somebody with a lot of experience in the field you are recruiting but is very full of themselves. Create as much of their backstories as possible so that you can effectively portray them in the interview.
Step 3: Have your candidate interview you as each profile
This is where your tech recruiter candidate gets a real chance to prove themselves. Have them interview you as each candidate. Try to answer these questions as best you can based on the profile that you’ve constructed. At this point, you should be noting down what types of questions the interviewer asks, how technical the questions are, what cultural questions are they after, and whether they ask any behavioral questions.
You can also note how consistent their interviews are. Do they ask different questions to different people or do they ask the same questions? Do they drill down on particular issues that come up or do they stay on the surface for the most part?
Step 4: Talk to your candidate about their impressions of the interview and who they would hire
This is the crucial part where you get to learn a lot about what your technical recruiter candidate thinks. Ask them about what their process was for evaluating each developer candidate. You also want to know what their opinions are and how they weigh the different Impressions that they got to effectively compare the candidates to each other. In the end, you want to get a recommendation from the recruiter about who they think would be the best fit for the position They should be able to defend this decision.
You’re ready to hire a technical recruiter
You can ask your recruiter candidate questions till your face goes blue but it won’t replace the information you get from actually seeing how they deal with a recruiting situation. We are big fans at Devskiller of work samples in all sorts of different verticals and industries and recruiting is no exception. Next time you hire a technical recruiter, give them a work sample as a part of the hiring process. You’ll get a much better idea of whether they can do the job or not.
Of course the work sample is only part of the process. To get more interview questions and actionable techniques for finding a tech recruiter, check out our The all-in-one technical recruiter hiring guide.
Have you hired a tech recruiter recently? Tell us how you did it in the comments.
