5 Ways Engaging Dev Communities Can Boost Your Hiring

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas, as in escaping old ones” ~John Maynard Keynes

Recruiters have been following the archaic hiring paradigm since the dawn of time. Wait until a job role opens up, start sourcing and attracting candidates under short notice, assess, interview, and recruit candidates hastily. This method is not ideal for finding the best talent out there, some of whom are better suited for your job role but are not even looking for a job.

Also, what happens when talent shortage becomes a hard reality? A recent 2021 study showed that 69% of companies are facing difficulty in recruiting due to talent shortages right now. Some recruiters settle for less-than-ideal talent, leading to a bad hire, to inadequate screening and assessments.

The other reason could be a bad interview experience, which unfortunately is quite a common occurrence. Rethinking and reinventing your interview process begins with investing in a foolproof, intelligent interviewing tool.

Before you can even begin thinking about assessing and interviewing developers, you need to prioritize the process of finding and hiring the elite (read most qualified) few long before a job role opens up; to avoid running up the costs of a bad hire as well as to ensure business continuity.

To relate the words of Keynes to our current situation, if you are unable to find qualified candidates on the regular platforms, it is time to switch things up – recruiters need to go where the developers go.

How a ready-made developer community can help recruiters

A developer community, also called a talent pool, is a live, thriving, talented hub of individuals who recruiters are neglecting to tap into. Various estimates of the global talent pool of developers show that it stands anywhere between 18 million to 35 million, and is constantly increasing by 20% every year.

Yes, you know where I’m heading with this – building and nurturing your relationships with diverse developer communities to accelerate your hiring.

Since great candidates don’t come around as often as recruiters would like, here are a few ways to build and strengthen your relationship with developer communities.

#1 Talent networking events

The candidate personas that you created painstakingly will come in handy here. Find out what kind of events they like to attend; career fairs, conferences, workshops, etc. As a recruiter this is a good opportunity to join in, meet potential candidates, and identify what they look for in a job role.

You can even organize your events if you have the time and resources to do so. Tools like HackerEarth’s hackathons, for example, enable organizations to get in front of one of the largest global pools of qualified talent, 6 million to be precise. Get in touch with top talent who could be interested in joining your developer community.

#2 Be a part of the ongoing dialogue

While forums like Reddit, GitHub, and Gitlab are hotspots for developers to stay connected, there are several more communities that have popped up recently. Recruiters need to keep these communities on their radar and find ways to be a part of the ongoing conversation. This accelerates the hiring process and helps understand what developers want, better.

#3 Sourcing tools

Sourcing tools are a great way to identify passive talent (developers who are not currently looking for a job). They allow you to perform search scans of millions of online profiles, and the selected ones are automatically added to your talent pool. Even if the profiles don’t fit any particular opening right away, they will come in handy when a job role opens up out of the blue.

The more engaged the community, the faster your hiring process

This is obvious math, right? Once you have identified developer communities to be a part of and built your talent pool, it’s time to engage and nurture these relationships. The more engaged the community, the more productive it becomes as a pipeline for future roles. Here are multiple benefits of having a qualified developer community on hand.

#1 A safety net to fall back on

When an employee abruptly leaves the company, the onus falls on recruiters to fill up the role as quickly as possible. A warm and active developer community means that you do not have to start the candidate pipeline process from scratch. You would already have talented candidates on hand and know exactly whom to reach out to who would be a good fit. This drastically cuts down on the time-to-hire for your hiring process.

#2 Qualified talent at your fingertips

If you often hire for similar profiles, then you should be building your own developer talent pool. This makes it easy for you to add qualified candidates to your pool who didn’t make the cut this time. Instead of ghosting them, keeping them engaged is the smart thing to do. Although they might not be the right fit today, they could be a rockstar on your team in the future.

#3 A long-term recruiting strategy

While a talent pool might not be of use to you right away, it is an indispensable weapon to have in your corner. With talent shortage increasing by the minute, you never know when you need a safety net to fall back on. Also, it gives you a better idea about the positions you already have covered, and the gaps in your team that you need to fill.

#4 Reduced cost-per-hire

A talent community will help you to organize and segment anyone who has ever interacted with your brand. When you have a readymade talented pool of candidates to choose from, only the best make the cut. This makes it easier to assess and interview prospects as well as reduces the time spent on finding the perfect fit, cos you’re directly choosing from the creamy layer. Each hiring cycle will be cheaper with reduced cost-per-hire, as you don’t have to start from the beginning, carry out expensive marketing campaigns to promote your job openings or waste your time on a mass of unqualified candidates.

#5 A strong employer brand within the community

As a means of keeping your community engaged, you should be proactively sending out thoughtfully curated company content that showcases your work culture, employee experiences, office updates, and relevant blog posts. This serves to ensure that your company is top-of-mind with candidates who are looking to make a job switch.

Finding the right people is already hard enough without you losing out on candidates who don’t fit the bill right now. Recruiters need to think on their feet to attract the cream of the crop. Just because some of the top talent didn’t cut it this time for this particular role or they are not looking for a new opportunity, is no reason to risk losing them.

Start finding ways to be a part of the dialogue with developers, nurture your relationships with the community, boost your hiring efforts, and grab the talented developers ASAP!