There is a great saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.”

Tech searches follow a common recipe that offer limited results; especially when up against another agency with the same client search and time to submit is critical. It goes like this.

  • New position comes in and tech stack identified.
  • Recruiters get excited and turn on the recruiting juice.
  • Recruiters reach out to a short list of known potential candidates. (make note of this step)
  • Recruiters then search proprietary databases, LinkedIn and/or Indeed, DICE, etc.
  • With commonly low candidate interest/engagement, frustration sets in within days.
  • Ugh … Next search please before I shoot myself.
  • Rinse, repeat.

How to improve results:

Simply commit 20% of your ‘daily’ sourcing efforts (start with 15 minutes per day) to neglected nooks and crannies that most recruiters are not exploring. This boosts the quality of your ‘known potential candidate’ pool which is a critical step in the process above.

What ultimately separates the mediocre recruiter from the top performer is the discipline of regularly looking in places that are not designed for recruiting.

Over time this daily investment in cultivating relationships with hard to find/engage talent will pay off as new positions come in. Your time to pounce is now before these tech centric communities become more and more popular with recruiters.

Separate yourself from the recruiting masses:
Since each recruiter has their short list of known talent for any given tech stack, it’s important that your list does not simply contain many of the same techies everybody else is submitting. Ensure your pool contains more untapped talent which will give you a competitive advantage.

In the end, everybody knows that they need to spend more time on developer focused sites like GitHub, Stack Overflow, tech community forums, etc., but most recruiters aren’t disciplined enough to mine them on a daily basis.
Make this simple change today and get ahead of your recruiting peers!
Giggle while you work:
Putting aside daily time to search talent off the beaten path is now your secret weapon. Because you’re on to something that most others are not doing, you’ll actually find that you are more motivated and excited. You might event find yourself giggling as it’s just too good to be true.