How to Attract Talented Software Developers

TL;DR: Convey three ideas: (1) a solid business model, (2) challenging technical work, and (3) a supportive culture.

Sourcing high-quality, software developers as candidates is hard. Just finding them poses some serious challenges, but then convincing them to want to work for you can feel nearly impossible. Because of conditions in the job market, developers can be fickle. Planning out the way you communicate to attract talented employees, let alone software developers, is key.

As an organization, you need to define and align on a high level communication strategy. The strategy should lay out the big ideas you want candidates to understand, and there should be very few of them. Everyone in your organization should align 100% on this strategy. In interviews, candidates will detect conflicts in messaging from organizational leaders if everyone is not on the same page. Invest the time and effort, and get this right.

Once your strategy is in place, you need to get tactical and put those ideas into specific words. Think through what to say and what not to say. Software developers can be very picky about how you convey ideas to them; there are single words that will make an excited prospect walk out of your interview, and many more that will destroy interest. Here are a few sensitive areas: programming languages and frameworks; deployment and system management; work planning and tracking; agile software development methodologies. Do some market research and try to mitigate those types of issues for your organization.

Now you have a plan for what to say and how to say it. Run this by actual developers. Take feedback, but stay genuine to the message you want to convey. The best candidate for you will be the one who responds most strongly to the ideas that mean the most to you.

Good luck!

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