3 underrated ways to recruit tech teams

Building tech teams is clearly one of the most challenging things Recruiters have to deliver. SaaS companies, eCommerce, and any other tech product must be developed and maintained by large technical teams. Those include open spaces full of software engineers, DevOps, production engineers, SREs, product owners, designers, testers…spacing different levels of seniority and responsibility.

Keeping the quality of hires high is as essential as the hire itself. The HR function has evolved in the last years to keep up with this challenge, developing captivating talent attraction campaigns, stronger employer brands, and crafting messages that speak directly to all the techies out there.

But it’s a very crowded market, where everybody is looking to attract the same, handful of engineers.

In this article we will see 3 underrated ways to recruit tech teams without compromising on quality:

1. Ensure a constant flow of junior developers

As we mentioned here in our previous article, hiring managers are not exactly keen to hire Junior Developers. But once we have a stable core team, made by managers and experienced developers, we should make sure to always have a Junior Developers to support the rest of the team.

It is true that they won’t perform as well as their senior colleagues, but by definition, they won’t be junior forever. Growing and cultivating the skills we need in-house can be a strong competitive advantage in the mid-term.

Having a greenhouse of technical talent, coached on the job by senior team members, results in having a stronger (and more sustainable) technical leadership in the future.

By investing in coaching and training we can save on employment costs, recruitment costs and have a consistent succession plan of people who already know the company, the product and fit in its culture. And this is especially true where employee turnover can be high.

Recent studies show how keeping a 20/80 ratio of junior and senior employees in your tech team can lead to a 29% cost saving (not only on the youngest part of your team but as well on what will be your future core team).

Moreover, opening the doors to junior developers means making tech more inclusive, and the talent shortage more likely to get better.

2. Build a tech talent community around your projects

This is a strategy long used by leading tech employers. It consists of letting your team share their knowledge, tips, challenges, technology-related stories about your projects. When we openly share knowledge about the technology we use, what we are building, the challenges we overcome as a team, this can create the following effects:

• We position our team (and our brand) as a thought leader and subject matter expert on this topic;
• We attract readers who are genuinely interested in what we are doing and in those technologies (the people we want to hire);

Medium is definitely a good tool to do that, but a dedicated company blog can work as well. Here you can find a nice example of a technical blog aiming at building a talent community and positioning the employer brand.

3. Hire remote engineers in a foreign country

Hiring people or outsourcing in foreign countries is nothing new. But in most traditional environments it is seen as something you do to save money and you have somehow to settle for less quality.

That’s not true anymore. Enlarging our talent pool by looking in foreign countries can be extremely beneficial. We can find amazing technical talent and we can increase the diversity of our teams much faster.

Although this is a great option, we may face some challenges:

• Lacking knowledge of foreign talent markets;
• Lacking legal entities (managing HR & payroll in a foreign country)
• Time Zones and language barriers.

But no worries, there is much help you can find if you encounter the above issues, like using an EOR service, hiring through outsourcing, and embedded talent solutions.

Although headhunting, job posting, and having a multi-channel sourcing approach will always be at the center of our strategy, trying out the above methods can help us solve the tech talent supply challenge. It will help us have a more long-term, strategic approach to the problem and, ultimately, making the industry more inclusive.