3 Unusual Q&A Sites to Source IT Talent From - Quora, Github, Stackoverflow

Less and less developers and IT professionals are putting themselves up on spaces like LinkedIn for fear of the deluge of recruiters who’ll annoy them with unsolicited invites and job queries, so it’s no longer a great area to fish anymore. In fact, several IT recruiters have told us that they’re noticing their connections disappearing off LinkedIn or deleting experience from their profiles so that they don’t come up in searches by Recruiters. As Glen Cathey wrote a few weeks back, Recruiters are ruining LinkedIn.

Anyway, this doesn’t stop developers and IT pros from their activities online, not by a long shot! They’re still there, doing what they do best – communicating with each other via computers. So if you’re looking for knowledgeable IT talent with proven skills, how about sourcing them from blogs and Q&A communities where they’re the ones answering problems and sharing coding best practices? Pre-qualification at it’s best!

Try these sites out for size:

QUORA.com

Quora is a general Questions and Answers website which millions of people from all over the world ask millions of random questions every day. Like everything, there’s a section for IT and computer-related questions, and it’s the ones who answer these questions you’re looking for. How well do they explain the problem and solution? Did they use a skill or language that you’re looking to hire for? Could they fit into your business?

Here’s a search string for sourcing Quora members who answer questions using specific skills or computer languages that you could be recruiting for:

site:quora.com (C# OR C++ OR Asp.NET) “added an answer” (London OR UK OR “United Kingdom”)

Quora Profiles let you send messages really easily!

I’d thoroughly recommend that you join Quora (for your own personal use if nothing else – it’s great fun!), because your internal search brings you really easily onto the profiles of answer-ers and allows you to message them (for free). By clicking on the person who answered the question, you’re taken to their profile. Simples!

Github.com

Github is a very popular platform and community for developers to collaborate on projects and demonstrate their skills, and profiles here are often very rich and full of data. It’s free to join (although there are paid options too but that’s for the developers who’re creating content to worry about, not you the recruiter) and simple to X-ray. Here’s a string to source profiles on Github, again using the same skills as above:

site:github.com (C# OR C++ OR Asp.NET) repos (“Location * London” OR “location * UK” OR “location * United Kingdom”) -inurl:jobs

Stackoverflow.com

Stackoverflow is a question and answers site that’s specific to developers and programmers, and is again packed with profiles of developers based all over the world. Some profile data is rich and full of information, others are quite bare. The main thing you’re looking for is how well they answer questions relating to a specific skill, demonstrating their knowledge of the language and their abilities. Here’s a search string you can use for Stackoverflow, again looking for C#, C++ and Asp.NET developers in the UK.

site:stackoverflow.com/users (“c#” OR”C++” OR Asp.NET) “location * United Kingdom”

Happy hunting!