If you’re a startup owner or a recruiter, technical recruitment can be your biggest challenge. The road is full of bumps and curves, from finding talent to retaining tech teams. However, technical hiring can be streamlined when you have the right strategy in place. Some ways to make it easier can be using modern tools, offering flexible work hours, remote hiring, etc.

With the introduction of technological advancements, the demand for IT experts is at its peak. Due to this high demand, the tech industry has become more competitive than ever. Every startup strives to hire quality talent who can contribute to the overall business growth. While every business desires this, it is easier said than done. In achieving this ideal vision, they often face several technical hiring challenges.

If you’re the one - struggling to recruit top tech talent in your organization, this article is for you! Here, we will discuss some of the key challenges early startups face and how to overcome them.

Strong Employer Brand

It’s no secret that a positive ‘employer brand’ can attract high-quality candidates. Initially, most startups often struggle with building a strong brand’s reputation. They lack PR and recognizability. If candidates lack information about your business, they’re more likely to switch to a tech giant, even if you offer a great work culture and other perks.

Know that the employer brand plays a pivotal role in influencing the candidate's decision. As per LinkedIn, more than 75% of candidates consider an employer brand before stepping into the job application process.

Solution

As a startup owner or hiring manager, you must invest in improving the brand’s reputation. It will help you increase your quality hire three times.

Improve Your Work Culture

Collaborative spaces, quiet zones, and healthy team lunches are some factors that contribute to positive work culture. The better the workplace, the more productive and happy your employees will be. Once the office environment is well-developed, you won’t face any issues in your technical hiring process.

Leverage Social Media

Social media is a virtual marketing platform - and it’s equally important for recruiting. Therefore, it’s critical to build your employer brand on social media to let potential candidates know about your brand. Most importantly, use it to engage with candidates and share valuable information.

Improve Your Reviews

Another way to improve employer branding is to ask employees to review your company on sites like Glassdoor, Indeed, etc. It is essential to show others what your current employees think of you as a brand and whether you are ideal.

Attracting Quality Candidates

Unless you’re a well-reputed brand, you won’t be able to fall on the applying list of qualified candidates. According to Glassdoor, 76% of recruiters say that attracting top talent in the technical hiring process is the most challenging task.

A multichannel recruitment strategy can help you find and attract candidates easily. Here’s how you can do it:

Leverage Online Platforms

Recruiting sites are, of course, the means for hiring employees, but some of these sites require membership – which every organization can’t afford. Therefore, recruiting sites is not an option. Besides job portals, you can leverage online platforms, such as GitHub, StackOverflow, etc., to find and attract quality candidates.

These platforms have an online community where developers solve multiple technical issues. Big tech giants, like Microsoft, Sachs, etc., also use it.

Use Employee Referral Program

An employee referral program can help you connect with your existing employees’ professional network. When you ask your employees to find the next hire, they feel more valued.

Social Media Recruitment

Leveraging social media for recruiting talent can be your best bet. For example, LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to find and engage with talented folks. Having a social presence on social media can help potential candidates to get a deeper insight into your company culture and business operations.

According to CodinGame, tech recruiters say that the second biggest challenge is standing out from other companies to attract talent. Not all candidates are skilled and qualified, so companies constantly fight to hire and retain the right talent. Also, because technology keeps evolving, so does the hiring process.

Standing out from competitors is notably more challenging for you if you have limited resources. So, what can you do to stay ahead of your competition?

While having a high salary will always be the candidates' priority when looking for jobs, it is not the only thing they seek.

The other things that topped in the job seekers’ list are:

Working Remotely

After the pandemic, the way we work has completely changed. Today, most employees say they want to continue working remotely even after the pandemic ends.

The ability to work remotely gives flexibility to employees, and you will get your work done simultaneously. It’s a win-win situation!

Great Healthcare Benefits

According to Clutch, over half of employees have said health insurance is an essential benefit impacting job satisfaction. To remain competitive in the tech industry, you can offer medical, ancillary, and wellness benefits that appeal to the needs of current and future employees.

Let’s face it: you will get hundreds and thousands of job applications when you post a job vacancy. Hence, assessing multiple applications at once can be tough, isn’t it? Even HR departments of big tech companies often struggle to evaluate multiple candidates and conduct interviews.

Candidate screening helps you get a deeper insight into candidates’ soft and hard skills. Not assessing the candidate may result in a bad hire, leading to lost opportunity costs.

So, what’s the solution?

Data-driven recruiting can help stand apart and ensure you’re hiring the right talent for your organization. Here’s how:

Conduct Coding Assessments

Leveraging data-driven recruitment tools can streamline your technical hiring process and eliminate bias. You can use Intervue to conduct coding assessments, for instance. It will help you evaluate the candidates’ coding skills. Using such tools is worth it because it uses an auto-grading report system, eliminating candidates who didn’t pass the assessment.

Eventually, it will help you save time interviewing unqualified candidates and eliminate bias hiring.

Use An Applicant Tracking System

Using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can be a wise decision to streamline the resume screening process. It uses algorithms to match candidates against your job requirements. Therefore, it is worth using an ATS to save time by focusing only on qualified candidates.

Candidate Experience In Technical Hiring

8 out of 10 candidates say they never hear back from the recruiters after the interview. Most companies fail to give timely responses to candidates. As a result, candidates can have a negative experience with your company.

Negative candidate experiences can actively hurt a company's reputation and ability to advertise itself as the best place for potential talent.

If your candidates are treated well, this can influence their decision even if they have multiple job offers on the table. After all, a positive candidate experience makes candidates 38 percent more likely to accept a job offer.

Structure Your Technical Hiring Process

Having a structured interview process in place can help you streamline recruitment, hire the right candidates, and improve candidate experience.

Respond On Time

Know that not informing candidates about your decision can affect your employer brand and reputation. Candidates are impatient. So, they won’t wait for months for your response. They will move on to other opportunities.

Welcome Candidates’ Feedback

Welcome candidates’ feedback to get a clear insight into which area of your technical hiring process needs improvement. It will help you streamline the process for future interviews.

To sum it up, every business is unique, and so are the hiring challenges they face.

Attracting and retaining the top tech talent will remain a challenge. So, you need to revamp their technical recruitment process by keeping yourself updated on the modern recruitment trends in the market.

The points mentioned above will give you an idea of where you lack. Addressing these issues can help you attract the top talent and create a positive employer brand.