How Is Technical Recruiting Different from General Talent Recruiting

When business owners, hiring managers, and even HR managers think about recruitment, they get a headache. But it gets worse for those hiring tech talents, as the tech recruitment process differs from the general hiring process.

The second biggest problem? Many HR and talent acquisition managers aren’t familiar with the tech hiring process to begin with. Not to mention, they struggle to understand the differences between the different types of developers and companies’ needs.

That’s why we’re here to set the record straight.

In this article, we’ll explain how technical recruitment is different from general talent recruitment. We’ll also talk about the post-hiring challenges employers face after hiring technical candidates.

What the general recruitment process looks like

The standard recruitment process begins with creating a job description and publishing the vacancy to as many platforms as possible, including job boards and social media.

The next steps involve screening, conducting initial phone interviews, conducting in-person interviews with HR and hiring managers, filtering candidates, and hopefully, finding the right hire.

In some cases, the first batch of applicants may not be suited to the role. In that case, the company has to refine its job description and try again. (Yes, that means going through all of the above steps again!)

The general hiring process doesn’t consider the different tests tech talents need to take to move on to the next stages.

Understanding the different types of tech roles 

One of the biggest problems non-tech recruiters and HR agencies face when hiring tech talents is understanding the role they’re trying to fill.

The problem isn’t because they’re inadequate or lack knowledge. The problem is that there are many tech-related branches and jobs out there. You may even find certain tech jobs in one country but not in another.

For example, in Egypt and the MENA region, cybersecurity is a broad field with several sub-fields. In India, a commonly-sought role is data security specialists and analysts.

In the MENA region, companies aren’t looking for data security roles. However, they are more likely to be searching for data analysts, data scientists, or business intelligence analysts.

When it comes to tech roles, there are roughly 8 main categories or buckets to consider. These are:

1. Software Development
2. Analysis & Design
3. Testing & Quality
4. Database & Administration
5. Data & AI
6. Cyber Security
7. Management
8. Hardware

There are nearly 10 tech roles, excluding seniority levels, under each of these categories.

So, you can see why tech recruitment is a hassle. It’s also confusing.

How is technical recruiting different from general talent recruiting: The hiring process

Any recruitment process begins by attracting candidates to apply and go through your hiring process. Attracting top tech talents is a process in itself. Something we’ll handle in a separate article.

There are many ways technical recruiting differs from general talent recruiting. One of those is the tech recruitment process. Whether you’re an employer, hiring manager, or HR manager, there are a few points to consider.

• The role you want to fill 

Figuring out the title of the role is the first step. The second step is creating a clear job description that showcases what you expect this tech talent to do rather than a copy-and-paste template and hope for the best.

Publishing the vacancy on social media and job boards will guarantee you a ton of resumes. However, you can expect many are not-good-quality resumes and many are irrelevant to your needs.

This process can take hours because your hiring manager or tech team leader is better equipped to sift through the list. However, it’s exceptionally time-consuming and your tech team lead will have to drop everything else to find this new hire.

• Seniority level and interpersonal skills 

Assuming you’ve created the correct job description, shared your vacancy in multiple places, and sifted through 100+ resumes, there are other points to consider. These are the candidate’s expertise, seniority level, and their interpersonal skills.

If you’re hiring a tech team lead, for example, you need to know they can, in fact, lead a team. They can balance empathy, work, leadership, and their team.

Further reading: Climbing the Tech Ladder: Similarities and Differences between Junior and Senior Developers 

• Required technical tests 

The next step is to conduct technical, coding tests. These tests differ based on the type of developer you want to hire, their seniority level, and the type of work they’ll be doing.

For example, if you want to hire a frontend developer, your test should include relevant programming languages, specific coding skills, and more.

On the other hand, if you’re hiring a cybersecurity or network security engineer, the tests will be significantly different.

Besides setting up a test, you need to evaluate the results of that test or these tests.

• Post-hiring issues 

Let’s say you’ve found the developer or software engineer you wanted. It’s not the end of the road – not yet.

Once you’ve completed the hiring process, you need to go through the onboarding process. For most development roles today, it’s a virtual onboarding process, because most techies work in a remote capacity. 

Long-term, you need to ensure your company and tech team leaders can maintain developers’ productivity, boost their mental health, help them avoid burnout, and more.

• Retaining tech talents 

Last but certainly not least, one of the major differences between technical recruitment and general recruitment is employee retention.

While there are ways to retain employees such as employee rewards programs, monthly or quarterly bonuses, …etc., tech talents are different.

Retaining tech talents requires an understanding of how techies think, operate, engage, and work.

How is technical recruiting different from general talent recruiting

As you can see, technical hiring shares some similarities with general recruitment, but there are also several differences.

1) Worldwide competition = higher salary offers

One of the major differences between technical talent recruitment and general recruitment is that for tech talents the world is their oyster. In other words, skilled tech talents aren’t just getting job offers from local or regional companies, they’re getting offers from around the world.

“Companies hiring tech talents need to know that their competitors for those talents are worldwide,” comments tech hiring consultant and TechieMatter Verifier Mahmoud Azmi.

“Companies around the world are hiring techies from Egypt and other Arab countries. It’s because of this ‘global hiring’ situation, most salaries for tech jobs are bound by the US dollar, which makes them quite higher compared to other roles like HR, marketing, and even sales,” Azmi explains.

2) Tech hires don’t sell themselves

Another obvious difference is that tech talents don’t know how to sell themselves in job interviews.

“When interviewing tech talents, the HR manager or recruiter will have to ask many questions to dive deep into the candidate’s background and skills,” explains Azmi. “They need to dig out the information.”

3) Wide range of tech jobs and fields

Every field has its range of professions and jobs. Tech hiring isn’t an exception. However, it does get confusing for non-tech recruiters or even managers, sometimes.

The reason is, tech jobs are A LOT and quite diverse.

“There are too many categories of tech roles,” says former tech team leader, Mahmoud Azmi, adding that besides the many categories, “the same role can have many names.”

“There’s also the issue of programming languages and each talent’s expertise in using those languages,” Azmi says.

4) Differences in developers’ skills based on previous work

Whenever you want to hire someone, you look at their previous experiences. But the situation varies when recruiting tech talents.

“It’s not a good idea to hire a product developer in a software house. Or to hire a developer who worked at a software house in a product-focused role,” reveals Azmi. He explains that software house developers work faster, whereas product developers can be slower but have greater attention to detail.

Both developers are good but their pace and attention to detail differs based on where they’re working, he adds.

Wrapping it up

There are several differences when you’re looking for tech talents compared to other fields like translation or marketing or even sales. Not to mention, the hiring process itself moves differently. It’s often longer. 

The biggest challenge with recruiting developers or tech talents emerges when the person looking to hire them doesn’t come from a technical background.

Imagine wanting to launch a business, but you need to hire tech talents when you’re not familiar with the role you want to fill, the years of experience needed, or even the types of skills needed.

Should the developer be familiar with Kotlin or SAS or R? Do they need to know Python? Am I hiring a backend developer or fullstack developer?

Do I need one developer or a whole team? If I’m going to hire a full team, how can I find a team lead for them? What are the responsibilities I should assign this team lead to ensure my project is on the right track?

There are literally hundreds of questions and criteria. So, where do you begin? 

You can start by getting in touch with TechieMatter. We help companies, startups, and business owners of all sizes find the right tech talents for their business needs. 

Even if you don’t come from a tech background, we can help. TechieMatter takes over the entire tech hiring process from creating a job description to onboarding your employee for you.

Start hiring tech talents with TechieMatter today!