How to Attract and Retain Better Candidates with Technical Recruiting Training

In a recent survey of digital leaders across 82 countries, 70% indicated that a skills shortage prevents their organization from keeping up with the pace of change. According to analyst IDC, the worldwide shortage of full-time software developers is expected to increase from 1.4 million in 2021 to four million by 2025. While technology company CodinGame found that 61% of human resources management are struggling to recruit qualified development talent. 

None of this is particularly surprising. The job market for technical roles such as software development and IT has been hypercompetitive for years, and there’s no real end in sight. The talent shortage continues to grow, particularly as more businesses have embraced digital transformation. 

Even in spite of recent tech layoffs, this increasing competition for a limited talent pool has made it crucial that leadership within your organization understands what’s truly involved in technical recruiting. After all, you cannot attract and retain the best talent if your hiring managers don’t fully grasp the complexities of the roles they’re trying to fill. 

Here’s how technical recruiting training can help them develop that knowledge.

What Is Technical Recruiting? 

Technical recruiting refers to the process of sourcing specialized talent for highly technical roles. Although the responsibilities of a technical recruiter are similar to any recruitment professional, they must maintain a working knowledge of the industry and role for which they’re recruiting. Typically, technical recruiters also coordinate closely with internal IT and technical professionals during the recruitment process, identifying and addressing their workforce and personnel requirements. 

The roles targeted by technical recruiters include, but are not limited to:

• User experience (UX) designer
• Project management
• Front end engineering
• Back end engineering
• DevOps and software engineering
• Data analysis
• Systems administration
• IT

What’s Involved in Technical Recruiting Training? 

Technical recruiting training helps develop not only the broad skills required of all recruiters, but also specific working and technical knowledge relevant to your organization. This begins with a basic understanding of high-level concepts and jargon associated with your organization’s technical roles. 

Recruiters will also learn about: 

• Industry standards and best practices 
• Recruitment trends.
• Technology, both existing and emerging 
• The tools used for technical recruitment management 
• Negotiating with a prospective candidate 
• Project management 
• Labor laws and relevant regulations 

Technical recruiting training typically also focuses on the development of skills such as:

• Networking and communication
• Multi-source recruitment
• Agility, flexibility and adaptability
• Technical writing

The core idea behind this training is that your recruiters should be on equal footing with candidates. They won’t be caught off guard by terminology or concepts they don’t understand, nor will they find themselves at a loss as to what questions they should ask. This allows them to more accurately and effectively assess each candidate. 

Lastly, technical recruiters will learn how to develop a long-term strategic roadmap for their recruitment efforts. This will allow their organization to take a more proactive, systemic approach towards hiring technical talent, from screening prospective candidates’ resumes to the interview process and identifying the most promising applicants for a position.  

What Are the Benefits of Technical Recruiting Training? 

The most obvious benefit of technical recruiting training is that it helps your organization more effectively attract and retain new tech talent. Candidates who apply for a position will have a clearer idea of the role and responsibilities. More importantly, because recruiters “speak the language” with tech talent, your hiring process will be more engaging overall, making your organization more attractive for candidates who may be considering multiple potential employers. 

The knowledge and skills developed through technical recruiting training can also be applied to develop a more structured, strategic approach to recruitment. In some cases, they might even put that knowledge towards introducing new technology into the hiring process, such as automation and data analysis. Moreover, an understanding of the role technology plays in each department and position is a considerable asset even for non-tech recruitment. 

Finally, a well-trained technical recruiter will be able to help your organization build a specialized talent acquisition pipeline for any technical positions it needs to fill, rather than just reach out on LinkedIn or other social media, for example. Although it’s possible to bring candidates in through traditional recruitment channels, technical recruiting typically requires a different approach to sourcing. 

Conclusion

There was a time when technology was the sole domain of the IT department. Those days are long behind us, however. In today’s business landscape, every organization will eventually need to hire someone with specialized technical skill sets—and every department will eventually require that expertise to keep it functioning day-to-day.

In the face of an ever-increasing skills shortage, hiring managers need to up their recruitment game. They must develop the necessary technical knowledge and skills to engage and attract top talent. Otherwise, they simply cannot compete with their savvier peers. 

Develop your technical recruiting skills and help your business thrive with SocialTalent’s Recruiting Training.