Tech Recruiting: Does Your Tech Recruiter Represent Your Best Interests?
Mark Twain once said: “Write what you know.”
Fabric Staffing knows technical recruiting.
We also know a lot of people are looking for jobs right now – while our clients are working hard to maintain revenue and productivity. The valuable role technical recruiters play in connecting companies and engineers has never been more important than now.
Great recruiters understand the importance of capability, transparency, and actionable solutions that yield results. We know a great career is more than just a paycheck. It is about commitment to strengths that bring people and companies together to achieve great things.
With this in mind, we wrote this article as your Easy Recruiting Guide for engaging a technical recruiter that keeps your best interests in mind.
Tech Recruiting: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RECRUITERS, ENGINEERS, AND COMPANIES
Engineers want to know they will not be sold throughout an interview process by the tech recruiter or staffing agency. They value recruiters that share career-building advice and direction based on opportunity, compensation, and market dynamics. They realize the best technical recruiters are those who build long-lasting relationships that focus on their unique professional desires.
Hiring managers value technical recruiters who understand the requirements of the position. They present qualified leads and suss the best candidates for every position. Technical recruiters are the eyes and ears of the company. They actively reach out to candidates, collect resumes, initialize conversations, schedule meetings, and share important information about the hiring company’s goals, leadership, culture, and structure. When companies want the best talent, they hire the best talent seekers.
Companies want the best tech recruiters on their side. A team of recruiters that are connected to the highest tiered engineers and the best tech companies – with a proven track record in demonstrating capability, transparency, and actionable solutions that yield results.
For all your upcoming decisions, keep these principles in mind – and we will grow and prosper together.
Tech Recruiting: Capability
The best tech recruiters demonstrate their value on the first call. They are prepared, they understand the requirements of technical roles, and they match candidates with company culture. They also have direct insight about industry competitors and are prepared to ask the right questions:
- What new technologies are you planning to integrate in the future?
- What are the biggest tech challenges you are currently facing with your product/service?
- What development process does the current tech team use (waterfall or agile)?
- What are the company’s expectations for this role?
Engineer – Before sending that resume to the tech recruiter pinging your LinkedIn inbox, make sure they are worth the time. After all, recruiters want to represent every developer as a person, so make sure they don’t consider you just another “submittal.” Get them on the phone. Listen to their pitch. When it is your turn, test their knowledge. A recruiter’s response to a complicated question reveals their true intentions.
Ask the recruiter questions to give confidence that the recruiter will accurately represent you during the hiring process.
Questions like: – How did they find you, and what about you stood out to them? – How they define their relationship with the hiring company? – How do they explain the company culture in one sentence?
A top tier recruiter should be open about how your profile/resume popped up on their screen. The best tech recruiters do what is called “active sourcing,” where they are given a specific role and from a client and actively search through job boards, social media (GitHub and LinkedIn), and other sources and physically compare the company’s open role expectations to an engineer.
The best recruiters take pride in how they found their “perfect fit for the job.” Recruiters who are reluctant to share information on how they found you, are either utilizing some questionable resources or honestly don’t know how, either way, they should be avoided. Would you be comfortable knowing the tech recruiter representing you doesn’t know the difference between HTML and SQL?
The best tech recruiters know enough about tools and languages to get them through a first-round interview for a software gig at Google. They’ll be able to follow a conversation about how you built that amazing NLP (Natural Language Processing) model in college and debate with you on whether or not you should have used Python or R. This skill is a necessity with the tech recruiter representing you because poor representation can keep you from landing that role.
It is important to understand how deep of a connection the recruiter has with the hiring team. The best recruiters use the hiring managers/team members’ first names and not title/position when discussing information about the company. The best tech recruiters have strong relationships with hiring managers, whose opinions are respected by the hiring team.
Ask questions like:
- How big is the current team and how big do they want to grow?
- Are the software teams embedded together, or are they separated by departments?
- What is the hiring manager seeking that is not on the Job Description?
- Describe the company environment?
- How long have you worked with the engineering team?
- How are new ideas addressed and discussed with management?
Tech Recruiting: Transparency
Employers – The best technical recruiters are honest and transparent about the candidates they submit. They respect everyone’s time and expectations during every interaction. The best tech recruiters help each company decipher who that perfect candidate is and how to attract them to the business. The technical staffing agency offers advice throughout the interview process, checking in with hiring managers, and sending follow-up details on each candidate.
On the flip side, the best tech recruiters also give the hiring managers the hard truth during the candidate process, when/if the hiring managers should drop a candidate that is being too difficult or not taking the application process seriously. Challenge your recruiter’s transparency by asking questions like:
- What does the candidate care more about? Salary or the company’s culture, product, and team
- Do you think the candidate is a good culture fit?
- Do you believe the candidate is serious about potentially joining the team?
- Do you think that candidate has what it takes to be successful in the role they’re interviewing for?
- Who else is the candidate currently interviewing with?
- What other offers does the candidate have?
- What are the top things this candidate is looking for? Is this aligned with the company?
- Do you think the company is wasting time processing this candidate? Is there more interest on the company’s end compared to the candidate
Engineer – No one likes being ghosted. Your tech recruiter is the last person to ghost you. If there is limited advancement during an engineer’s interview process, the best recruiters reach out to each developer via email, text, phone call, or social media to maintain the engineer’s interests and update developers on their interview process. Scheduling engineers for the next steps, following-up on developer interviews and tech tests while giving honest feedback about how the team felt the interview went. The best tech recruiters take initiative steps to:
- Request and reach out to engineers’ professional references
- Present new opportunities that match the engineer’s personal career goals
- Relay sensitive interview feedback with helpful feedback on improving for the future
- Confidently inform the developer about constructive criticism from hiring managers, with a plan on how to ensure future successes
- Call/message to check-in for the purpose of keeping the developer engaged
Tech Recruiting: Solutions
Employers – The best technical staffing firm collaborates with the employing team as a strategic partner to offer advice and solutions sustaining company growth. The best tech recruiters show they have the company’s best interest by staying ahead of the hiring goals and specific needs. Recruiters are able to provide constructive feedback about each company’s interview process (from a candidate’s perspective).
The best tech recruiters are able to locate and identify bottlenecks while offering relevant solutions, saving the company time, and raising the total value of the firm’s revenue. The recruiting firm creates an indispensable relationship based on good merit and the success of each solution. Employers can expect that the best tech staffing firm to be able to:
- Advise companies on hiring strategies
- Offer advice on current markets/trends and apply competitive solutions
- Understand the core differences between you and your competitors (culture-wise, compensation, product/challenging work)
- Use creative/innovative means to onboard that dream candidate
- Be able to advise on budget – is the budget for a role realistic and/or market rate?
- Continue to fill your pipeline with the highest-quality of developers
Engineers – Landing the dream gig is everything. The best tech recruiters do everything in their power to make that dream happen. The best recruiters put as many relevant opportunities on each engineer’s radar, constantly updating every developer on feedback and changes, helping professionals determine which opportunity is best without bias, and most important – they’ll deliver.
At Fabric Staffing, we are committed to helping organizations unlock their full potential through innovative talent solutions. Contact us to learn more about how we can support your talent acquisition and development needs.
